NEW TREND: TEACHING AND LEARNING IN A MULTI AGE CLASS ROOM

Education

Second National Level Interdisciplinary Seminar on "Exploring Emerging Trends and Innovation in Research in Commerce, Science & Technology, Humanities and Social Sciences”

Multi-age classrooms or composite classes are classrooms with students from more than one grade level. They are created because of a pedagogical choice of a school or school district. They are different from split classes which are formed when there are too many students for one class - but not enough to form two classes of the same grade level. Composite classes are more common in smaller schools; an extreme form is the school. Studies of the performance of students in composite classes shows their academic performance is not substantially different from those in single-grade classrooms; instead, outcomes tend to be a function of the teacher's performance. For a given number of students, composite classes allow greater administrative flexibility in allocating students to classes. This allows gender balancing, matching of student needs to teaching expertise, and balancing class sizes. By allocating children to classes according to specific learning needs, it is possible to arrange classes with narrower ranges of abilities. Composite classes often meet resistance, with parents often believing that their child is disadvantaged by being in one. This perception is often regardless of whether their child would be in the younger or older cohort.[6Advocates of multi-age classrooms point to the lack of age stratification in workplaces, families or other social environments as a reason to create a similar environment in the classroom. A multiage classroom is not simply a group of different aged students placed in the same classroom. Instead it is a well organized and thoroughly thought out program designed to take advantage of the natural diversity created.

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