This paper extends the scholarship on attainment grouping by focusing on the policy initiatives of streaming and subject-based banding (SBB) in Singapore. The study is framed by the concept of pragmatic perfectionism, which refers to the continuous and ideals-oriented drive to improve a system through practical, incremental and paradoxical…

Computer-assisted instructional programs such as intelligent tutoring systems are often used to support blended learning practices in K-12 education, as they aim to meet individual student needs with personalized instruction. While these systems have been shown to be effective under certain conditions, they can be difficult to integrate into…

Students of diverse abilities tend to be divided into groups that advocate academic homogeneity. Ability grouping practice is embedded within the contemporary hyper-accountability culture in education that has shifted the focus of the teaching community from promoting academic attainment in pupils to being highly ranked in the market-based…

As part of a wider study into the educational attitudes and experiences of white, working-class male pupils in the north of England, this paper explored the ways that male pupils in years 10 and 11 navigated and experienced the six-level (A-F) academic banding system present in their British mainstream secondary school (Ayrefield Community…

Grouping students into separate classes according to their 'ability' is an inequitable practice that does not, overall, improve academic outcomes. Research has continued to show that class ability grouping widens the educational gap between students from disadvantaged and privileged backgrounds. PISA data analysis suggests that class ability…

This study estimates the effect of between-class ability grouping on Chilean secondary students' academic achievement. We rely on a structural feature of the school system: A considerable number of students who complete primary school must change schools to start their secondary education. Cardinality matching was performed to account for…

Ability grouping of students into separate classes within a school can be called 'between-class ability grouping'. This practice has persisted in Australia despite evidence that it is socially inequitable and does not improve academic outcomes. A systematic review of peer-reviewed literature about between-class ability grouping in Australia from…

Many studies have explored the effect of grouping and task distribution strategies in collaborative learning in the conventional condition, for example, grouping based on student's learning style, gender diversity, and motivation, but few studies have investigated the impact of heterogeneous grouping with mixed gender and ability factors and the…

This study considers how class composition, in terms of between-student variability and the average level of achievement, is related to the academic development of students, and how these relationships can be explained by features of the class learning environment. At the start of secondary education, Flemish schools can decide autonomously how to…

Since there has been no clear overview of educational practices that benefit high-ability students in mixed-ability classrooms in grades one to six, this review aims to provide insight into the effects of educational practices on the cognitive and affective-motivational learning outcomes of high-ability students. In order to identify these…

In the continual pursuit of classroom learning effectiveness, researchers and educators aim to develop strategies that improve student performance and learning. One such strategy is to create academically homogeneous environments where students are grouped into classes based on their preconceived academic ability. The research team tests this…

While international research has demonstrated that ability grouping is inequitable, Australian research has often overlooked equity concerns, predominantly focusing on studying the benefits of grouping for students perceived to have high ability, especially in mathematics. This paper investigates the effect that mathematics ability grouping has on…

Teachers often group students into teams to organize their classrooms and network-informed interventions hold great promise as a way to facilitate positive peer influence and promote the diffusion of intervention effects. Yet thus far, relatively little research has explored how teachers or prevention scientists can best use social network…

The micro-level enactment of educational policy has received little attention in the physical education [PE] literature, particularly as it relates to setting policy. This study employs enactment theory to provide original insights into the ways in which setting policy was enacted by PE teachers in three mixed-gender secondary schools in England.…

We study the problem of partitioning a class of N students into k groups of n students each (N = k × n), such that their learning from peer interactions is maximized. In our formalization of the problem, any student is able to increase his score in the subject the class is studying up to the score of the student who is at p-percentile among his…