Making Education Personal: Ability Grouping or Blended Learning?
September 27, 2013
Ten
years ago, when my oldest daughter started kindergarten, the educational buzz
phrase du jour was “differentiated instruction.” This often played out on the
colorful carpet of the kindergarten classroom, where students would work in
groups from themed reading boxes.
Differentiation,
in this case, meant that the boxes contained phonics flashcards for students
still learning their letter sounds, early chapter books for more advanced eager
readers and a variety of reading tools in between. Although each type of box
was suited for a different reading level, all adhered to a common theme,
allowing a group of students at very different points on the learning curve to
work together but also get what they each needed.
The
following year, and for the rest of her elementary school career, my daughter
was placed in “ability groups” within her classroom for reading and math.
However, some parents of advanced learners, not satisfied with this
classroom-based arrangement, splintered off, pulling their kids out of our
public school to attend a different one that offered separate, self-contained
classes solely for “gifted” students who had “tested in.”
Savvy
parents whose kids didn’t pass the district’s placement test had their kids
privately tested, hoping for a more successful outcome. The stakes were high:
Getting into the district’s gifted program meant their kids would stay on an
“advanced” track through middle school and, often, high school.
These
two methods — grouping clusters of students of similar abilities within a
classroom and splitting higher-achieving students off into separate classes
(sometimes referred to as “tracks”) — reflect a decades-long debate in
education: What’s the best way to meet the needs of a variety of learners? Does
ability grouping help or hurt kids?
A
recent report by the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) shows a
resurgence of ability grouping in fourth grade and the persistent popularity of
tracking in eighth-grade mathematics, according to Tom Loveless, author of the
March 2013 report “How Well Are American Students Learning?”
published by the Brown Center on Education Policy at the Brookings Institution.
The trend is surprising, he says, given the fact that in the 1990s, because of
concerns of racial and socioeconomic inequity, several prominent groups,
including the ACLU, the NAACP and the National Governors Association, passed
resolutions condemning tracking. Classroom ability grouping remained popular
until the mid-1990s, when it waned in favor of whole-class instruction.
Now,
in a time of education funding constraints, and with national attention focused
on closing the achievement gap between white and minority students,
differentiated instruction is being carefully scrutinized again, and new,
technology-driven learning models are emerging.
Tailored learning or stigma?
Critics,
including the National Education Association (NEA), the country’s largest teachers’
union, say that ability grouping and tracking can lead to labels that often
stay with children, particularly low-income and minority students, throughout
their academic careers.
Although
the achievement gap between minority students and their white counterparts has
narrowed, results of a 2012 NAEP study that measured student achievement at
ages 9, 13 and 17 shows standardized reading and math test scores of white
students range from 17 to 28 points higher than those of minority students.
“All
kids have strengths and weaknesses,” says Debbie Silver, Ph.D., an educator and
author of Fall Down 7 Times, Get Up 8: Teaching Kids to Succeed and Drumming to the Beat of Different Marchers: Finding
the Rhythms for Differentiated Learning. “It is important for
them to understand that, regardless of the circumstances they were born into,
they have control over their choices and their efforts.”
Silver
says ability groups can be helpful in the classroom, but flexibility is key.
As
a middle school science teacher instructing 200 students per day, she didn’t
have time to create individual lessons plans for each student. Instead, she
developed individualized plans for small groups.
“You
have to have loads of resources at your fingertips,” she stresses. “You have to
be up, moving around and seeing what your students are doing.”
Groups
should also be fluid, not rigid, Silver says, allowing children to move and
improve as much as they need to and can. “Differentiation means the teacher
needs to pay close attention to who kids are, not only who their parents and
their test scores say they are.”
When
it came time to place a child into a particular group, Silver says, her magic
words were “for now.”
“Teaching
is less about comparing kids to each other and more about comparing them to
their personal best,” she says. “You always make sure the next step leads them
to their personal best and continually move the bar beyond their reach.”
All
families, regardless of race and socioeconomic factors, expect their children
to be challenged, says Kristin Bailey-Fogarty, a Seattle-area language arts
teacher who has taught advanced, general and remedial classes at the high
school and middle school levels. “The difference is advocacy. Some parents are
more likely to understand the system and steer their children toward
advanced-track classes early on.”
Some
minority parents, such as Emijah Smith, say their children have been hurt
academically by lowered expectations and false assumptions about their
abilities.
“My
daughter attended a public elementary school in an affluent, primarily white
neighborhood,” Smith says. “When she arrived there in first grade, her teacher
told me she couldn’t read at grade level. The principal had her tested and
found that she was reading above grade level.”
An
African-American mom in Seattle, who did not want her name or the names of her
children used for fear they would be labeled, said she was surprised by the
rigidity of the system. When her children made the transition from a private
school to a public middle school, they were denied entry into the public
school’s advanced-track classes because they had not taken the placement tests.
They asked for greater academic challenges, and although an attempt was made to
give them more, the message they often received from their teachers was that
the work they were doing was “good enough,” recalls their mom.
Short-term, long-term impacts
The
use of ability grouping methods can have an impact on not just a student’s
current class experience, but also on his or her entire educational trajectory.
The pathway can be difficult for many parents to understand or plan for.
My
daughter moved on to a middle school with tracked classes in language arts and
math. Access to these classes was rationed — determined by placement tests —
and there was little opportunity for students to move up to the more
challenging classes if they hadn’t tested in by sixth grade.
By
the time she completed eighth grade, administrators at the middle school
decided to eliminate advanced language arts classes, returning to the
within-class ability cluster model. But math remained separated in advanced and
regular tracks, leading to different math tracks in high school, which, in
turn, impacted access to certain colleges.
Grouping
also raises the issue of stigma and lower self-esteem, which can strike any
child, sometimes with long-lasting effects.
When
she entered middle school, my daughter was placed in the advanced math track,
skipping one year of math. Though she worked hard to pass the class, she missed
passing the placement test to continue on the advanced track by a few points.
Because her school only offered two tracks, she, and more than 50 students in
the same boat, was forced to repeat the exact same curriculum the following
year (as opposed to doing some needed review and then tracking ahead when
ready). From then on, she referred to herself as “dumb in math.”
New learning models
“All
the hand-wringing is the result of a traditional classroom structure that
doesn’t allow for differentiated learning,” says Robin Lake, executive director
of the University of Washington’s Center on Reinventing Public Education (CRPE).
“If
you have one teacher and 26 kids, how does the teacher move all those kids
forward when she has standards to meet and competing demands on her time? The
only way within this structure is to pull some kids out. What excites me
looking forward is how we can change the structure to support individualized
learning.”
Lake
is a champion of “blended learning environments,” which she says are cropping
up all over the U.S. in rural and urban locales, most notably New York City,
and could be the solution to the ability grouping dilemma.
Blended
learning environments use a combination of in-person and online instruction,
enabling students to rotate through classroom-based “learning stations” at
their own pace. Khan
Academy, the popular education tutorial website, is an example of a
delivery model that can be used to teach specific concepts within a classroom.
“The
excitement I see from teachers when they’ve implemented a blended learning
model is palpable,” Lake says, adding that New York City schools that have
implemented the model report a reduction in discipline problems.
Although
the concept is still new, organizations such as the Gates Foundation provide
grants to support it. A variety of blended learning service providers are
emerging, such as Education Elements, a for-profit company that designs blended
learning modules and provides a technology platform to easily bring online
learning to schools.
There
is also potential cost savings associated with blended learning environments.
Seton Education
Partners, a nonprofit organization dedicated to revitalizing urban
Catholic schools and expanding educational opportunities for low-income
children, has developed the Phaedrus Initiative. Phaedrus uses technology to
make Catholic schools financially viable and address the “opportunity gap”
between low-income minority students and their more affluent non-minority
peers.
Through
the use of a variety of lesson content providers, a classroom of 30 children
can have three to four smaller rotation groups. The computer programs are
adaptive, providing regular feedback on student mastery of the lesson, so
students can be accelerated or remediated as needed.
It’s
easy to imagine this setup applied to cash-strapped public schools.
“It’s
unrealistic to expect our teachers to be Superman, because he had supernatural
powers,” says Jeff Kerscher, who directs the Phaedrus Initiative. “I think we
should strive to make our teachers like Batman, who was a regular human with
all sorts of cool tools he could use to get out of sticky situations. I want to
give teachers the tools they need to meet the needs of individual students.
“Kids
want to know they are getting better,” adds Kerscher. “Blended learning allows
kids to see their progress and see that their efforts make a difference.”
Kerscher
piloted a blended learning curriculum at St. Therese Catholic Academy in
Seattle’s Madrona neighborhood, a pre-K–8 school. The school, he says, was
struggling academically and culturally. After one year of a blended learning
curriculum, Kerscher says, St. Therese students showed significant gains in
reading and math achievement. The Phaedrus Initiative is expanding to other
Catholic school sites, and the concept of blended learning is gaining interest
from urban public schools, Kerscher says.
“Our
middle school results have shown it is possible for students who are behind to
catch up at accelerated rates. What really excites us, however, is the
combination of small-group instruction and personalized learning that ensures
they do not fall behind in the first place,” explains Kerscher.
“Technology
has become cheap and personalized. This is the way of the future. I think
blended learning will take off over the next 10 years,” says Kerscher.
“Parents
should demand it.”
Alison
Krupnick is ParentMap’s education editor and the author of Ruminations
from the Minivan: Musings from a World Grown Large, Then Small and the
blog Slice of Mid-Life.
What’s working
- According to data collected by the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), the frequency of using ability grouping in fourth-grade reading instruction rose about two and a half times, from 28 percent in 1998 to 71 percent in 2009.
- During its first year of blended learning, St. Therese Academy students school-wide outperformed the national averages for growth in reading and math.
- New York City has created the iZone, a community of innovative public schools committed to personalized learning. The network is expected to reach 400 schools by 2014
Pengajaran Kelompok
atau Blended Learning?
Setelah membaca artikel
mengenai perbedaan antara pengajaran dengan pendekatan kelompok dan pendekatan blended learning. Maka banyak sekali
perbedaan yang mencolok antara keduanya. Untuk membedakannya maka terlebih
dahulu akan dipaparkan mengenai karakteristik antara kedua pendekatan ini dalam
pembelajaran. dan manakah yang sebenarnya dibutuhkan oleh siswa?
Pada pendekatan kelompok,
siswa ditempatkan pada suatu kelas tertentu berdasarkan tes penempatan kelas
atau placement test. Terdapat dua
metode pada pendekatan ini ada dua metode yang pertama pengelompokkan pada
siswa yang memiliki kemampuan yang sama dan untuk yang memiliki kemampuan lebih
tinggi dipisahkan. Jika gagal pada placement
test maka bisa jadi siswa akan mengulang dengan kelas yang sama dalam kurun
waktu yang sama.
Hal ini sungguh tidak adil
bagi siswa, padahal mungkin dia hanya tidak bisa pada satu atau dua bagian saja
dalam pembelajaran, sehingga seharusnya review
dilakukan pada bagian-bagian yang dibutuhkan saja. Pada kelas ini guru tidak
dapat memfokuskan diri mengawasi siswa secara pribadi. Sehingga kemampuan siswa
tidak dapat dikontrol dan dilihat
perkembangannya secara pribadi dan dimungkinkan guru salah dalam menilai siswa.
Pengelompokan
juga menimbulkan masalah stigma dan rendah diri, yang bisa menyerang setiap
anak, kadang-kadang dengan efek jangka panjang
Dengan Blended learning memungkinkan siswa untuk belajar dengan fleksibel,
dan pendidik dapat memperhatikan secara dekat siswanya sehingga dapat mengukur tingkat kemampuan siswa secara
pribadi, hal ini didasarkan pada usahanya masing-masing dalam mengontruksi
pengetahuan dari berbagai macam sumber dengan berbagai cara, kelas dengan
jumlah siswa yang besar dapat dimodifikasi dan disesuaikan dengan kebutuhan melalui
blended learning. Dalam blended learning juga memungkinkan
terjadinya percepatan jika memang dirasa siswa lebih mampu kearah sana. Juga
memungkinkan siswa untuk mereview hanya pada hal-hal yang belum dikuasainya.
Seorang ahli mengatakan
bahwa sebenarnya mengajar bukanlah membandingkan dengan yang terbaik diantara
mereka, namun bagaimana membawa anak-anak kepada kondisi terbaik mereka.
Melalui pembelajaran blended learning hal
ini sangat mungkin dilakukan tak terkecuali di Indonesia, pemanfaatan teknologi
dan informasi yang mendunia saat ini memungkinkan siswa untuk mengontruksi
pengetahuannya melalui berbagai macam alat dan sumber yang ada dan dapat
diakses dengan mudah. Dengan blended
learning kemampuan siswa akan dapat terasah dengan baik, tidak hanya itu
melalui pembelajaran tersebut akan mengarahkan siswa pada pemikiran kreatif mereka sekaligus
persiapan untuk masa depan yang kondisi lingkungan kerjanya serba digital.
Hasil dari penelitian di
artikel juga memperkuat pernyataan tersebut, berdasarkan data National
Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), frekuensi kemampuan anak dalam
kelompok untuk membaca naik dari 28% pada tahun 1998 menjadi 71% pada tahun
2009. Begitupun yang terjadi pada siswa St Therese Academy selama tahun pertama
menggunakan blended learning pertumubuhan
dalam membaca dan matematika mengungguli rata-rata nasional.
Jadi, jika di negara lain blended learning dapat begitu
dimanfaatkan untuk mendukung siswa dan guru dalam pembelajaran yang efektif dan
dapat digunakan untuk melihat kemampuan siswa secara pribadinya masing-masing.
Maka, di Indonesia pembelajaran ini pasti juga dapat dilakukan dengan syarat
guru juga mau belajar untuk menggunakan teknologi sehingga dapat mentransfer
dan berbagi ilmu dengan siswa, serta dapat mendukung siswa untuk memenuhi
kebutuhannya secara maksimal.
