Managing Groupwork in the Heterogeneous Classroom

Academically and linguistically heterogeneous classrooms are a widespread phenomenon in the U.S. and in other countries. In such classrooms, students have a wide range of previous academic achievement or significant differences in their proficiency in the language of instruction. Often, heterogeneous classrooms are the result of educators’ intentions and efforts to offer equal access to rigorous curricula, high-quality teaching, and productive interactions with peers. These educators advocate detracking the schools and curtailing traditional ability groupings to create equal opportunities to learn for all students. However, many teachers, students, and parents have had inconsistent or even contradictory experiences with the implementation of these attempts at educational reform. Parents object to watered-down curricula. Students complain about boredom or, conversely, about failing too many classes. Teachers are frustrated by their inability to address the needs of their students at either end of the achievement continuum. For example, in a heterogeneous 10th-grade biology class, about a quarter of the students cannot use the textbook or submit satisfactory lab reports because they read and write at a 5th-grade level. In an 8th-grade social studies class, several newly arrived immigrant students have little or no prior knowledge of momentous events or important figures in U.S. history. In an untracked 9th-grade algebra class, about half the students find it difficult to express their mathematical thinking orally or in writing using conventional and appropriate academic language, although they can solve the problem correctly. In a mainstream 6th-grade classroom where students have nine different home languages, many are bilingual and some are trilingual, some are designated as “limited English proficient,” and six students have just joined the class from the pullout English Language Development program.