Maltese educators’ experiences and perceptions of streamed and mixed ability classes : a comparative study

Abstract

There is extensive literature on the ongoing debate on the outcomes of streamed and mixed ability classroom settings. These classroom organisation strategies not only affect the learners’ experience at school but also play an important role in the educators’ professional life. The primary purpose of this study is to investigate the attitudes of Maltese educators towards such organisational strategies and how their perceptions affect their everyday professional lives within the classrooms. This qualitative study adopts a grounded theory methodology in the collection of the data via semi-structured interviews that are analysed through the interpretative constructivist approach. Results show that the educators in this study prefer teaching homogeneous classes to heterogeneous ones as it simplifies their professional life, despite their awareness of the detrimental effect streaming has on some students. Moreover, the educators in this study do not feel confident teaching mixed ability classrooms and implementing differentiated teaching pedagogies. There is an expressed need for further teacher training, support from the Ministry of Education and School Management teams, as well as smaller class sizes, in order to tackle the struggles they face when teaching mixed ability classrooms. This study is beneficial for policymakers and practitioners as it provides an insight on how the policy frontline implementors perceive the grouping strategies to be. These perceptions are shaped by the educators’ teaching experiences (Aftab, 2015), therefore, investigating the local teachers’ perceptions provides education leaders and policymakers with a key to what is happening inside our schools.