Abstract:This paper contributes to the recent turn within Children's Geographies concerned with understanding and illuminating educational inequalities. The focus is upon pupils assigned to lower 'ability' groupings, in a school under pressure to raise attainment. The objective of the paper is twofold, firstly to consider how school grouping practices affect children's sense of belonging in lessons, and secondly, to contextualise these findings against children's spatial orientations within the broader school environme… Show more
“…Indeed, this switch of prioritisation further suggests the idea that decisions are driven by pressure from the PSC rather than by a consistent approach to grouping. In both forms, there were suggestions in our data that there are inequities in terms of teaching staff, spaces and resources, reflecting the wider literature (Brown, ; Taylor et al ., ): Phonics teaching hasn't been great in the past and what was happening was it was always the lowest ability children were out of class with a teaching assistant getting… and that was the phonics diet they had. So, you've got some children that were literally on Phase 2 forever .…”
Section: Educational Triage For the Phonics Screening Checksupporting
confidence: 78%
“…Grouping practices are facilitated by this discourse of ability as inherited and permanent—what Marks () refers to as ‘fixed ability thinking’. This discourse frequently determines the grouping practices of schools (Marks, ), particularly in Maths, where the assumption of sequential learning means that it is ‘the subject most tightly framed by tracking and performance measures’ (Brown, ). As I argue in later sections, this idea that some ‘bright’ children move more quickly through sequential stages of learning is important in Phonics too, as it provides the justification for grouping practices.…”
Section: The Critique Of Ability and Its Use In Grouping Childrenmentioning
confidence: 99%
“…The wider research on grouping at all ages suggests that it affects ‘pupils’ self‐esteem, academic self‐concept and their emotional responses to school’ (Ireson & Hallam, : 61). As Pykett (2012: 34, cited in Brown, : 403) comments, students ‘quickly learn how the school, local authority or educational establishment perceive, pigeonhole and arguably limit their localised “aptitudes” or “aspirations”’. Grouping potentially limits learning in formal and informal ways, by restricting access to more difficult content (Kutnick et al ., ).…”
Section: Research On Grouping Practicesmentioning
confidence: 99%
“…The practice of interventions, where lower‐attaining children are removed for additional work in Literacy and Maths, can result in a narrowed curriculum (Dunne et al ., ), and some studies have found that children in these groups are taught by lower‐qualified teaching assistants in inappropriate teaching spaces (Brown, ). Grouping practices are affected by the need to focus on particular borderline children in preparation for tests, in systems of ‘educational triage’ (Gillborn & Youdell, ), including in early years classrooms (Roberts‐Holmes, ).…”
This article examines the impact of a statutory assessment in England, the Phonics Screening Check (PSC), on classroom practices of grouping children by 'ability'. Bearing in mind the argument that assessment is the rudder that steers the otherwise slow-moving battleship of educational practice, it is argued that the PSC has altered how teachers organise their classes and curriculum in both the affected year group (Year 1, children aged 5-6) and in earlier and later years. Using data from a nationwide survey of teachers (n = 1,373), focus groups and in-depth interviews with teachers, the article examines how this relatively new phonics assessment forms part of a 'policy storm' of pressures relating to accountability, which encourage teachers to place children in groups on the basis of ability, even when they have doubts about this practice and there is little evidence to suggest grouping improves attainment. Practices include grouping children within classes, across year groups or even across several year groups, by phase of phonics learning, guided by advice from bought-in private phonics schemes. There is also evidence of 'educational triage', where borderline children become the focus, and increased use of interventions which involve withdrawing children. Overall, the article uses the PSC to demonstrate how, in times of multiple policy pressures, assessment can rapidly alter practice, in this case making grouping a 'necessary evil', as one teacher respondent argued.
“…Indeed, this switch of prioritisation further suggests the idea that decisions are driven by pressure from the PSC rather than by a consistent approach to grouping. In both forms, there were suggestions in our data that there are inequities in terms of teaching staff, spaces and resources, reflecting the wider literature (Brown, ; Taylor et al ., ): Phonics teaching hasn't been great in the past and what was happening was it was always the lowest ability children were out of class with a teaching assistant getting… and that was the phonics diet they had. So, you've got some children that were literally on Phase 2 forever .…”
Section: Educational Triage For the Phonics Screening Checksupporting
confidence: 78%
“…Grouping practices are facilitated by this discourse of ability as inherited and permanent—what Marks () refers to as ‘fixed ability thinking’. This discourse frequently determines the grouping practices of schools (Marks, ), particularly in Maths, where the assumption of sequential learning means that it is ‘the subject most tightly framed by tracking and performance measures’ (Brown, ). As I argue in later sections, this idea that some ‘bright’ children move more quickly through sequential stages of learning is important in Phonics too, as it provides the justification for grouping practices.…”
Section: The Critique Of Ability and Its Use In Grouping Childrenmentioning
confidence: 99%
“…The wider research on grouping at all ages suggests that it affects ‘pupils’ self‐esteem, academic self‐concept and their emotional responses to school’ (Ireson & Hallam, : 61). As Pykett (2012: 34, cited in Brown, : 403) comments, students ‘quickly learn how the school, local authority or educational establishment perceive, pigeonhole and arguably limit their localised “aptitudes” or “aspirations”’. Grouping potentially limits learning in formal and informal ways, by restricting access to more difficult content (Kutnick et al ., ).…”
Section: Research On Grouping Practicesmentioning
confidence: 99%
“…The practice of interventions, where lower‐attaining children are removed for additional work in Literacy and Maths, can result in a narrowed curriculum (Dunne et al ., ), and some studies have found that children in these groups are taught by lower‐qualified teaching assistants in inappropriate teaching spaces (Brown, ). Grouping practices are affected by the need to focus on particular borderline children in preparation for tests, in systems of ‘educational triage’ (Gillborn & Youdell, ), including in early years classrooms (Roberts‐Holmes, ).…”
This article examines the impact of a statutory assessment in England, the Phonics Screening Check (PSC), on classroom practices of grouping children by 'ability'. Bearing in mind the argument that assessment is the rudder that steers the otherwise slow-moving battleship of educational practice, it is argued that the PSC has altered how teachers organise their classes and curriculum in both the affected year group (Year 1, children aged 5-6) and in earlier and later years. Using data from a nationwide survey of teachers (n = 1,373), focus groups and in-depth interviews with teachers, the article examines how this relatively new phonics assessment forms part of a 'policy storm' of pressures relating to accountability, which encourage teachers to place children in groups on the basis of ability, even when they have doubts about this practice and there is little evidence to suggest grouping improves attainment. Practices include grouping children within classes, across year groups or even across several year groups, by phase of phonics learning, guided by advice from bought-in private phonics schemes. There is also evidence of 'educational triage', where borderline children become the focus, and increased use of interventions which involve withdrawing children. Overall, the article uses the PSC to demonstrate how, in times of multiple policy pressures, assessment can rapidly alter practice, in this case making grouping a 'necessary evil', as one teacher respondent argued.
“…Finding a link between a sense of belonging in the classroom and a desire to construct and occupy informal spaces around school, Brown (2017) noted that the youngsters in lower 'ability' sets tended to occupy peripheral spaces. The meaning applied to such spaces is not fixed and may fluctuate with resistance ensuing from the construction of alternative meanings and narratives of place.…”
Section: Constructing Identity Through Narratives Of Placementioning
Survival in the Badlands: An exploration of disaffected students' uses of space in a UK secondary schoolThis article considers the understandings of space and place amongst a group of disaffected students, within an institution that had been in a state of flux over a number of years. It explores ways in which students are positioned by institutions into specific spaces, ways in which they use those spaces to challenge authority, and ways in which they appropriate both space and place to assert new, and often playful, identities.The authors consider the meanings of the spatial behaviour of students through notions of space and place as developed by Doreen Massey, with reference to a Foucauldian understanding of power. In some ways the students might be perceived as being marginalised, victims of a hierarchical environment in which their status is low. Yet they also emerge as active agents, forging new interpretations of their surroundings, robust group identities, and reinforcing ingroup relationships through spatial behaviour.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.
