Effects of Instructional Grouping

Reuman, D.A. & Mac Iver, D.J. (1994). Effects of instructional grouping on seventh graders' academic motivation and achievement. Washington, D.C.: Office of Educational Research and Improvement. (Report # CDS-R-50) ERIC Document Reproduction Service No. ED 378 260.

The study begins with a brief, although relatively comprehensive review (16 studies are cited in the opening paragraph alone) of between-classroom ability group in general and its relation to cooperative learning techniques in particular. One problem with the presented review is that the authors do not even attempt to define some of their highly conceptual terms (e.g., no definition was offered for the term "ability-grouped curriculum"). Failure to offer at least a cursory definition of such terms made it difficult for the reader to quickly place the study that was undertaken into the context of the existing literature.

The authors do, however, add both clarity and understanding of their conducted study to the article by presenting: (1) a brief overview of how their research differs from the existing literature (it tests between-class ability grouping and cooperative learning simultaneously); (2) a discussion of the existing research's relation to middle school students in particular; (3) a discussion of why it is important to examine motivational variables in studies of instructional grouping; and (4) a discussion of how their stu

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me of the variance on the study's dependent measures. The third section of the study consisted of the presentation of findings observed for all analyses performed on data. The first of these analyses consisted of a series of pretest comparisons to determine whether student groups began the study equated for gender, race/ethnicity, mothers' educational attainment level, grade level at which the student entered the school, and achievement. Findings were said to yield no significant differences (with one exception). However as to what statistical analyses were conducted and the resulting values or the number of students in these comparison groups, no information is presented. The reader is left to take the claims on faith! Some statistical information is presented for the analyses examining for heterogeneity of groups with respect to each subject area. The heterogeneous group was found to be more heterogeneous in some subject areas than in others. In general, the pretest findings were not clearly stated. Far too little statistical information was represented and the F values that were reported for the heterogeneity tests were based on so few groups in each academic area (e.g. , for language arts, comparisons were made
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Some common words found in the essay are:
Mastery Test, Service ED, Mac Iver's, Team Learning, Mac Iver, Campbell Stanely, Iver DJ, Achievement Test, Slavin RE, Stanley JC, marginally significant, heterogeneous ability, language arts, student team learning, homogeneous heterogeneous, reuman mac, cooperative learning, academic subject, section study, homogeneous ability, mac iver, reproduction service ed, document reproduction service, eric document reproduction, service ed 378,
Approximate Word count = 1810
Approximate Pages = 7 (250 words per page)

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