Education Insights • 2024 • Volume 2 • Issue 1 10 student-centered with a greater focus on versatile development, while teachers who favor ability grouping tend to focus more on academic achievement.56 Ultimately, ability grouping is a complex decision that principals and teachers must make that affects the entire school community, culture, and climate. Ireson and Hallam argued that teacher attitudes toward ability grouping vary according to the type of school and the subject they teach.57 Their study indicated that grouping structures adopted within a school vary based on teachers’ attitudes toward pupil grouping. Furthermore, their research reported that teachers, in general, believe behavior issues increase in lower ability classes, mixed ability grouping leads to better social adjustment for all students, and the setting of ability grouping focuses on ensuring that higher students benefit. The results of Al-Fadhi and Singh’s study of 102 teachers agreed and added that educators with high-achieving classes base their expectations on student ability while focusing on personal traits with lower grouped students.58 Several studies agreed that teachers’ perceptions toward both groups affected student academic success and behavioral mannerisms.59 Data from a Malaysian Secondary School were studied by Kusuanto, Ismail, and Jamil to find the influence of teachers’ perceptions on student behavior in between-class ability groups.60 Students’ selfesteem was measured using the Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale. The conclusion of this study suggested that high-achieving students were significantly influenced by supporting behaviors while low-achievers selfesteem was altered by perception of the teachers controlling behavior. Myers expanded on this by explaining that teachers expect higher-achieving students to make tremendous gains while assuming lower achieving students will exhibit numerous behavior issues.61 These expectations lead to certain behaviors and perceptions toward each group of students. Kusuanto, et al. suggested that teachers must show certain perceptions to students based on needs of the classroom when engaging in ability grouping.62 Determining the extent of implementation is a complex decision that others besides teachers must encounter. Administrators, too, should take responsibility for any negative consequences. Therefore, deciding whether to group students heterogeneously for instruction is a difficult decision that principals 56 Herbert J. Walberg, Arthur J. Reynolds, and Margaret C. Wang, Can Unlike Students Learn Together? (Greenwich, CT: Information Age Pub., 2004). 57 Ireson and Hallam, Ability Grouping in Education. 58 Hussain Al-Fadhli and Madhu Singh, “Teachers’ Expectancy and Efficacy as Correlates of School Achievement in Delta, Mississippi,” Journal of Personnel Evaluation in Education 19, no. 1-2 (2006): 51–67. 59 Al-Fadhli and Singh, “Teachers’ Expectancy and Efficacy,” 51-67; see also H. S. Tong, A Comparison of the Perception of Teachers Assigned to Teacher Higher and Lower Ability Group (Hongkong: University of Hongkong, 2002). 60 Prihadi Kususanto, Hairul Nizam Ismail, and Hazri Jamil, “Students’ Self-Esteem and Their Perception of Teacher Behavior: A Study of between-Class Ability Grouping,” Electronic Journal of Research in Education Psychology 8, no. 2 (2010): 707–24, https://doi.org/10.25115/ejrep.v8i21.1395. 61 David G. Myers, Social Psychology (Boston: McGraw-Hill, 2011). 62 Kususanto et. al., “Students’ Self-Esteem," 707–24.
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