I am a big Piaget fan and would be very interested to see more detail about how you are approaching your research? I also believe there is more we can learn but it requires a lot of out of the box thinking and sensitivity to scientific advances in how people learn at different stages of emotional and cognitive development. Do you address this?
I also believe it is important, but I have not addressed it in any serious way in my research. A related interest of mine concerns multi-age grouping and multi-year mentoring. I have suggested that such grouping should be based on stages of development, which may range from 3-5 years each, but I don't have a good handle on what the criteria are for allocating students to each group/stage. Does anyone else?
It's a very important question.Grouping students according to levels will be not fetch the desired results., However grouping them based on their individual capacities might work.
If, say, 15 students spend 3-5 years with one teacher (in what they call an "advisory" at the Minnesota New Country School), with some "graduating" and some new ones coming in whenever the are "ready", then they cannot all be at the same level regarding their capacities. Mixed-age and mixed-ability is good. This advisory as not a group that would all be learning the same thing at the same time. They are all learning different things, according to their needs and interests. They could team with students in other advisories who are learning the same thing at the same time. But I think too large an age difference in an advisory would not be good. Developmental level seems like an appropriate way to deal with this. Does this make sense, Reena?
I think Reena has an excellent point about grouping based on individual capacities. The trick here is to define "capacities" in a way that matches the competencies or skills being taught. Mixed age groups do well with this strategy if they have a chance to get to know each other and have some voice in what groups they want to be working in. Older students love to mentor younger students who are equally interested and competent to tackle whatever the problem or inquiry-based task is. Lots of variables involved and it would be a mistake to arrive at some generalized approach not based on principles of motivation, learning, and development in my view.
Yes, I agree, if you are talking about groups that work on a project together. I you are talking more broadly about ages of children in a school, there are limits to how large an age difference is optimal for students to interact in a whole school. Putting 18-year-olds with 8-year-olds is probably not as beneficial as putting them with 16-year-olds. In the current system, 3-6 years is typical for an elementary, middle, or high school. Montessori tends to go with 3 years, I believe, in a mixed-age classroom. My point is that I don't think age is the best determinant of who to put together. I don't think capacities are, either, except in the broad sense of developmental levels. So, I suspect that developmental level is, but what criteria are used to categorize someone as one developmental level or another? I would love to see some research about that.
There is some research on this, Charlie -- most coming out of Europe but CASEL's work with SEL is looking at some related topics.
- Badges
- Science topic
- Similar topics
- Psychology
- Mental Processes
- Learning