To mix or not to mix: A critical review of literature on mixed-age groups in primary schools
Item
-
Title
-
To mix or not to mix: A critical review of literature on mixed-age groups in primary schools
-
Description
-
In this review, I explore mixed-age grouping in primary schools, illustrating, through a review of scholarly research, its position within current education paradigms and in the field of education research. I justify my investigation into this topic and explicate my literature search procedure, considering the difficulties around establishing consistent terminology in mixed-age research. I explain various circumstances that give rise to mixed-age groupings and propose using four circumstantial categories – default, by-product, mandate, and preference – as a conceptual framework for understanding mixed-age phenomena. I then summarize findings from methodologically diverse inquiries into the effects of mixed-age grouping. These studies, conducted over the last sixty years, focus on many forms of mixed-age groups from around the world and consider both academic and social outcomes. Broadly speaking, outcome-based findings are inconsistent across time and place. Systematically measured differences are often small or non-existent. In the context of ambiguous empirical findings, I discuss the perspectives held by parents, teachers, and researchers around mixed-age grouping and highlight limitations of utilizing findings from comparative studies to inform education practice. I position the outcomes of my reviewed literature within the proposed circumstantial framework and discuss the implications of this standpoint. I deconstruct arguments for and against mixed-age grouping by posing the question “to mix or not to mix”, offering apparent reasoning for each position. I extend my perspective on the future of mixed-age research, focusing on the need for thorough description and clear definition of all investigated mixed-age groups, and conclude by critically considering mixed-age grouping as a promising education reform.
-
Creator
-
Cronin, Zoe
-
Subject
-
Mixed-age
-
Monograde
-
Grouping
-
Student outcomes
-
Primary education
-
Publisher
-
Faculty of Education, University of Cambridge
-
Cambridge Open-Review Educational Research e-Journal (CORERJ)
-
Date
-
2019-12-03T15:51:10Z
-
2019-12-03T15:51:10Z
-
2019-10-01
-
Type
-
Article
-
Format
-
application/pdf
-
Identifier
-
https://www.repository.cam.ac.uk/handle/1810/299491
-
10.17863/CAM.46563
-
Language
-
eng
-
Rights
-
Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported (CC BY-NC-SA 3.0)
-
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/