Two researchers present their views on effective strategies for ability grouping, pointing out how grouping both low- and high-ability students together can help both to achieve better when they are grouped heterogeneously. (CB)

Research in classrooms must be sensitive to new dimensions of teaching tasks that emerge at the group level. There are at least two tasks that can be identified as being affected by changes in group characteristics. The first task is to set the stage--the teacher must establish the proper context or setting to support academic activities. The…

To investigate the effect of heterogeneous and homogeneous instructional groupings used in a middle school eighth grade on selected student behaviors, 120 students were assigned to a heterogeneous group and 120 students to a homogeneous group based on several factors. The heterogeneous group was comprised of all students enrolled in the school…