Consensus Driven Solution

Consensus Driven Solution

Introduction

School settings are not responsible merely to deliver the academic literature to the students, but they are the most important learning center for children after their own parents. The learning environment at school has a great impact on the personality making process of a child. Therefore, all the school administration should consider the importance and responsibility placed on them (Sprott et. al, 2005). In order to provide the best learning experience, schools should continuously and critically analyze the needs of students which can be crucial for their achievement during the school life. These needs are not restricted only to the content delivered to students; rather it should also include factors like the classroom activities, other learning pedagogies and school architecture which create a positive psychological effect on the minds of children to bring the eagerness to learn in front of the world.

Discussion

Identification of need

The school administrations have focused only on the implementation of the concept of 'ability grouping' as a strategy to increase the motivation of students. It was presumed that the concept is the sole way of developing the sense of achievement in students. It was considered that by placing the students of similar academic ability together, children will learn quickly and get a better understanding of abrupt concepts. However, research studies carried out on the observation of ability grouped students have also revealed some negative factors. A research done on the 'Primary grade teachers' use of within-class ability grouping' showed that the students involved in the lower ability groups only a few critical comprehension questions and they were inclined on the non-instructional activities (Chorzempa & Graham, 2006). It has also been deduced from other academic researches that the students in ability grouping have problems of mobility across groups, have a low self concept, and the students in the low ability groups face severe problems in terms of quality of the work done which results in less or no sense of achievement (Segro, 1995).

The problems and issues related to ability learning suggest that although schools should use ability grouping as a learning technique, but it should not be the only methodology used (Ford, 2005). Thus, schools should also introduce a relatively new and beneficial concept of 'flexible grouping' in their classroom and school environment.

The concept of flexible grouping has been defined as 'allowing students to work in differently mixed groups depending on the goal of the learning task at hand' (Opitz, 1998). Although this concept of making flexible groups has been mostly used in the libraries for reading purpose, it can replicated and even modified based on the school settings. In fact, schools need to promote this concept in order to increase student achievement in the school setting.

The introduction of 'flexible grouping' can be both first order and second order change based on the extent to which the school authorities want to implement this strategy. It will be a better approach to bring a first order change by only making it a ...