(reblogged from researchnews)

This is an interesting look in educational practices outside of the US — in this case, the UK, and it seems to reinforce the attitudes present in this op-ed from The Guardian. Here are some definitions for US visitors like me who were a bit confused—

Streaming meant splitting pupils into several different hierarchical groups which would stay together for all lessons.

Setting meant putting pupils of similar ability together just for certain lessons. So, for example, it would be possible to be in a top set for French and a lower set for mathematics. (BBC)

I’m pretty interested in the benefits of collaborative peer learning and how it can be positively used in the formal educational setting so this kind of research interests me.

I’m curious, though, about the implication that this has for education in the US. After all, what are Honors and AP classes if not a form of setting? The same BBC article describes the current state of education in UK schools as follows: “three-quarters of maths lessons observed by inspectors used ability sets and it was used in well over half of all lessons in science and foreign languages.” Indeed, my middle & high schools used setting for these subjects and I personally found them pretty beneficial. I actually have a hard time imagining mixed-ability classes in these subjects in the higher levels of K-12 education (this is probably because I’ve only read literature that looks at peer collaborative learning in the elementary setting) or even in other subjects.

On the other hand, most music classrooms in K-12 education can likely be described as mixed-ability classrooms. Band, orchestra, and choral ensembles are frequently mixed-age and, by extension, pretty mixed-ability, and students bring a varied background of pre-existing musical knowledge to the general music classroom at every grade level. What implications does the research on setting/streaming/etc in other subjects hold for music education?