ABOUT WCER NEWS Events Cover Stories Research News International Research Press WHAT'S THE RESEARCH ON...? PROJECTS All Active Projects All Completed Projects PUBLICATIONS LECTURE SERIES PEOPLE Staff Directory Project Leaders ERG - EVALUATION RESOURCES GROUP RESOURCES Conference Rooms Equipment GRANT SERVICES GRADUATE TRAINING SERVICE UNITS Director's Office Business Office Technical Services Printing & Mail EMPLOYMENT CONTACT INFO MyWCER WORKSPACE LOGIN

New Directions for Mixed-Ability Instruction

December 7, 2009

How can teachers best organize students for instruction? On one hand, schools are asked to provide all students with a common set of cognitive and social skills essential for success as adults. On the other hand, schools are structured to sort and select students for different career paths based on their individual orientations and capacities. Adam Gamoran says recent research advances knowledge of tracking in three areas. First, international scholarship shows that, despite the various forms of tracking, the results are broadly similar: student achievement tends to diverge, and tracking reinforces initial differences by social class. Second, studies of attempts to reduce or eliminate tracking yield important insights into why tracking resists change. Third, studies on classroom assignment and instruction point toward new possibilities that may capture the benefits of differentiation for meeting students’ varied needs, without intensifying inequalities. Gamoran cautions, however, that how students are arranged matters less than the instruction they encounter. Bringing together research on tracking with research on teaching offers the most useful way to continue to shed light on this topic.