The pedagogical implications of ability grouping on students performance in Secondary Schools in Tanzania
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Date
2025-02-18
Authors
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Journal ISSN
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Publisher
Invention Journals
Abstract
Students learning abilities vary from one individual to another. This implies that teaching
instructions must be modified to reflect students’ capacities, leading to ability grouping as one of the strategies
for this purpose. This study was conducted to examine the effects of ability grouping in secondary schools in
Tanzania. A descriptive phenomenological design embedded with qualitative approach was used for this study.
Ten secondary school teachers were interviewed for the study, among them five were male and five female
teachers. The findings of the study revealed some various opinions about ability grouping. The positive
implications were shown, whereby, higher-achieving students were grouped in the fixed grouping and some
positive implications when learners in the low-ability group were placed in the mixed grouping. However, there
were also negative effects of ability grouping, whereby ability grouping is not effective as it causes many harms
and damages to students; there are no overall effects of ability grouping on academic performance if students
are grouped by achievement; it is not only ability grouping itself that increases students’ performance but also
the role of peers. It is also not clear whether teachers really use appropriate strategies to instruct groups with
different abilities. Many teachers use the ability approach as a mechanism to identify low achievers in learning;
in some cases, teachers even demoralize lower achievers or pay less attention to the lower achievers, attributing
their poor performance to laziness. Consequently, the tendency towards labelling results in the declining
performances of lower achievers. This study recommends the use of effective practices and alternatives to
ensure equality and access to learning. There is a need to conduct a study to determine teachers’ use of
strategies along with ability grouping.
Description
International Journal of Humanities and Social Science Invention (IJHSSI) Volume 14 Issue 2, PP. 44-50
Keywords
Pedagogical Implications, Ability grouping, Students performance, Secondary schools
Citation
http://www.ijhssi.org/