Chapter 3 Methodology
The present study investigated the effects of ability grouping on Sunny Junior High English teaching. The research involved both quantitative and qualitative approaches. For the quantitative data, students and parents were asked to complete self-administered questionnaires; for the qualitative data, teachers, administrators, as well as selected students and parents were interviewed. This chapter will describe participants of the study, instruments used to collect data, and data analysis procedures.
Participants of the Study
The participants in this study, including students, teachers, administrators, and parents, are presented in this section.
Students
The student participants in this study were the 9th graders of Sunny Junior High School in the school year of 2004. Those who had 7th-grade and 8th-grade English in resource classrooms because of mental deficiency and those who transferred from other junior high schools were excluded in this study because they did not experience both 7th-grade ability-grouped English class and 8th-grade mixed-ability grouped English class in Sunny Junior High School. Prior to the formal study, 5 students were randomly picked out to fill out the student questionnaires and to be consulted for question modification. Therefore, the remaining 263 students who experienced both 7th-grade ability-grouped English class and 8th-grade mixed-ability grouped English class were the participants of the present study.
Among the 263 participants, 40 students were selected for interviews. Based on
the ratio between Group A, Group B and Group Transfer (approximately 2:5:3), 8 of the 40 interviewees were from Group A, 20 from Group B, and 12 from Group Transfer. The sex in the three categories was equally allocated to male and female.
Teachers and Administrators
Three of the 4 English teachers involved in ability-grouped English teaching were interviewed. The other one was the researcher herself. As Table 2 shows, two English teachers who were also homeroom teachers were responsible for 1 class of Group A and 2 classes of Group B respectively. One English teacher was responsible for a class of Group A and a class of Group B. One English teacher was responsible for a class of Group B. The years of their teaching experience were 8, 7, 10, and 29 years, respectively.
Table 2 Background information of English teachers
English teachers Years of teaching experience Group assignment Teacher 1
(Homeroom teacher) 8 years 1 class of Group A
2 classes of Group B Teacher 2
(Homeroom teacher) 7 years 1 class of Group A
2 classes of Group B Teacher 3
(The researcher) 10 years 1 class of Group A
1 class of Group B
Teacher 4 29 years 1 class of Group B
Four out of 9 homeroom teachers of the student participants were recruited for interviews. The four teachers were chosen to be interviewees because they were in charge of their homeroom classes at the 7th and 8th grades and they did not overlap with English teachers. As Table 3 shows, the years of their teaching experience were 6, 22, 18, 9 years, respectively. Three of them could depict the distribution of their homeroom students for 7th-grade English class; however, one of them did not notice the situation.
Table 3 Background information of homeroom teachers Homeroom
teachers
Years of teaching
experience Group distribution of their homeroom class
Teacher 5 6 years 1/3 of the students in Group A;
2/3 of the students in Group B
Teacher 6 22 years
1/3 of the students in Group A, the rest in Group B for the 1st semester;
1/2 of the students in Group A, the rest in Group B for the 2nd semester
Teacher 7 18 years 1/3 of the students in Group A;
2/3 of the students in Group B
Teacher 8 9 years Never noticed.
The administrators related to ability grouping, including the director of students’
academic affairs, the chief of curriculum section, and the chief of registry section, were interviewed. The years of their administrative experience were as follows: the director of students’ academic affairs, 5 years; the chief of curriculum section, 6 years;
and the chief of registry section, 20 years.
Parents
Parents of those students who had 7th-grade and 8th-grade English in resource classrooms and parents of those transfers from other schools were excluded in this present study. Besides, two parents who were selected to fill out parent questionnaires and be consulted for question modification before the formal study were also
excluded. Therefore, parent questionnaires were distributed by the remaining 266 students to their parents. In total, the valid returned questionnaires used for the analysis in the present study were 170. The researcher interviewed ten of them who were willing to receive interviews through telephone.
Data Collection Instruments
The instruments included questionnaires and interviews. The questionnaires were
used for the purpose of obtaining quantitative data of students’ and parents’ attitudes towards ability grouping and mixed-ability grouping. Interviews were also conducted to get in-depth understanding of students’ opinions and attitudes, which can not be explored by means of questionnaires, such as detailed descriptions of the classroom situation, personal views about the effects of ability grouping and mixed-ability grouping on English learning, and individual preferences for either ability grouping or mixed-ability grouping. Parents were also interviewed for the same reason.
To increase the validity of the study, it was necessary to look at the effects from different aspects. Thus, the teachers and administrators related to the ability grouping practice were interviewed.
The questionnaires and interview questions were designed based on a review of previous studies and a pilot study on an earlier draft of the questionnaires.
Student Questionnaire
The self-administered questionnaire for students (see Appendix B) consisted of 2 parts. Part One was essential to obtain students’ background information, including sex, the elementary school students were from, ability-grouping practice in elementary school, years of English learning before junior high school, and the group they were assigned in the 7th grade.
The forty-eight questions in Part Two dealt with students’ attitudes and preferences towards English learning in grouped and ungrouped classrooms. The following areas were explored: (1) stigma attachment (2 items); (2) affective effects (11 items); (3) teaching (10 items); (4) learning (8 items); (5) in-class interaction (14 items); (6) general responses (2 items); (7) preferences (1 item). These areas were the most frequently mentioned in studies concerning ability grouping (Burroughs & Tezer, 1968; French & Rothman, 1990; Goldberg et al., 1966; Lou, 1986; Yu, 1994). The
sources of the question statements were Lou (1986), Yu (1994), and the opinions of the five students in the pilot study. In the meantime, the advisor and the two committee members of the thesis were also consulted for the question modification.
The questions of Part Two are as Table 4 shows.
Table 4 The areas of questions in student questionnaire
Item Content Item Number
Students’ perceptions about the stigma attachment
in the two kinds of classrooms. Q1, Q24
Students’ perceptions about the affective effects of the two kinds of classrooms.
Q2, Q3, Q4, Q5, Q6, Q25, Q26, Q27, Q28, Q46, Q47 Students’ attitudes towards teaching in the two
kinds of classrooms.
Q7, Q8, Q9, Q10, Q11, Q29, Q30, Q31, Q32, Q33 Students’ attitudes towards their learning in the two
kinds of classrooms.
Q12, Q13, Q14, Q15, Q34, Q35, Q36, Q37 Students’ attitudes towards in-class interaction in
the two kinds of classrooms.
Q16, Q17, Q18, Q19, Q20, Q21, Q22, Q38, Q39, Q40, Q41, Q42, Q43, Q44 Students’ general responses to the two kinds of
classrooms. Q23, Q45
Students’ preferences towards either grouped or
ungrouped classroom. Q48
For each of the first 47 questions, students had four choices, namely, strongly agree, agree, disagree, and strongly disagree. Students had to check in the box that best reflected their opinions. Notice that Question 46 is for students of Group A;
Question 47 is for students of Group B; those who ever shifted their groups had to check both Questions 46 and 47. For question 48, students had only three choices – grouped classroom, ungrouped classroom, and not sure, and they were asked to write down the reasons.
Parent Questionnaire
The self-administered questionnaire for parents (see Appendix C) also consisted of 2 parts. Part One was related to students’ background information, including
students’ sex, the elementary school students were from, ability-grouping practice in elementary school, years of English learning before junior high school, and the group students were assigned in the 7th grade.
Part Two aimed to explore parents’ attitudes and preferences towards ability grouping implemented in English learning. Two parents were consulted for the question modification. The same as student questionnaire, the advisor and the two committee members of the thesis were also consulted for the question modification.
The questions of Part Two are as Table 5 shows.
Table 5 Questions in parent questionnaire
Item Content Item Number
Parents’ attitudes towards stigma attachment of ability grouping. Q1
Parents’ attitudes towards learning evaluation. Q2
Parents’ perception of the effects of ability grouping on students’
affective states. Q3
Parents’ preferences towards either grouped or ungrouped English class. Q4
For each of the first 3 questions, parents had four choices, namely, strongly agree, agree, disagree, and strongly disagree. Parents had to check in the box that best reflected their opinions. For Question 4, parents had only three choices – grouped classroom, ungrouped classroom, and not sure, and they were asked to write down their reasons.
The Interview Questions for Teachers
The interview questions for the 3 English teachers (see Appendix D) aimed to investigate teachers’ thoughts about ability grouping for an in-depth understanding of the issue from teachers’ perspective. The questions consisted of two parts. Part One included teachers’ background information: how many years the teacher had been teaching English; which group and how many classes the teacher taught under ability grouping system. There were twelve questions in Part Two, as shown in Table 6.
Table 6 Interview questions for English teachers
Item Content Item Number
What did the teachers feel about students’ in-class performance or
reactions in Group A? QT1
What did the teachers feel about students’ in-class performance or
reactions in Group B? QT2
Did the teachers use different teaching strategies, such as contents, activities, presentation, evaluation, or assignment, in the 2 kinds of classes: Group A and Group B? Why or why not? If yes, what were the strategies the teachers used in Group A and/or B and what were the intentions of doing so?
QT3
Did the teachers think ability grouping helped students learn better than
ungrouping? Why or why not? QT4
Did the teachers use different teaching strategies, such as contents, activities, presentation, evaluation, or assignment, in grouped and
ungrouped classrooms? Why or why not? If yes, what were the strategies the teachers used in ungrouped and grouped classrooms and what were the intentions of doing so?
QT5
Did the teachers set the same learning goals for Groups A and B? Why or why not? If no, please give examples.
QT6
Did the teachers set the same learning goals for grouped and ungrouped
classrooms? Why or why not? If no, please give examples. QT7 What were the difficulties the teachers encountered in Group A
classrooms? And how did the teachers cope with the difficulties? QT8 What were the difficulties the teachers encountered in Group B
classrooms? And how did the teachers cope with the difficulties? QT9 What were the difficulties the teachers encountered in ungrouped
classrooms? And how did the teachers cope with the difficulties? QT10 Did the teachers prefer teaching ability-grouped classrooms or
mixed-ability classrooms and why? QT11
Did the teachers vote for ability grouping or against it? Why and if they
change their opinions now? QT12
The interview questions for 4 homeroom teachers (see Appendix E) aimed to examine homeroom teachers’ perceptions about students’ or parents’ reactions to grouped and ungrouped classrooms. The questions consisted of two parts. Part One included teachers’ background information: how many years the teacher had been
teaching and introduction about students’ placement. Part Two consisted of 7 questions, as shown in Table 7.
Table 7 Interview questions for homeroom teachers
Item Content Item Number
Did the homeroom teachers find any adaptation problems (social or psychological) about ability-grouped English classrooms from the students in their homeroom class? If yes, what were they?
QH1
How did they cope with these problems or counsel their students? QH2 What were parents’ general responses to ability grouping in English class? QH3 What were students’ reactions to ungrouped English class for the 8th
grade? Did they find any adaptation problems about the ungrouped English class? If yes, what were they?
QH4
How did they cope with the problems or counsel students? QH5 What were parents’ general responses to ungrouped English class for the
8th grade? QH6
Which approach do they personally prefer or support? Why? QH7
The Interview Questions for Administrators Related to Ability Grouping
The administrators related to ability grouping included the director of students’
academic affairs, the chief of curriculum section, and the chief of registry section. The questions for them (see Appendix F) are shown in Table 8.
Table 8 Interview questions for administrators
Item Content Item Number
How long had they been in their positions? QA1
What were their perceptions about parents’/teachers’ general responses to
ability grouping in English class? QA2
What were the administrative difficulties they encountered when they dealt with ability grouping? How did they cope with it? Did they have similar or different problems in dealing with ungrouped classes?
QA3
What were their perceptions about parents’/teachers’ general responses to
abolition of ability grouping? QA4
Which approach do you personally prefer or support? Why? QA5
The Interview Questions for Students
To obtain sufficient data about students’ opinions and attitudes towards ability grouping, the researcher randomly selected 40 students to be interviewees. Because the ratio between Group A, Group B, and Group Transfer was approximately 2:5:3, 8 of the 40 interviewees were from Group A, 20 from Group B, and 12 from Group Transfer.
The interview questions (see Appendix G) consisted of 2 parts. Part One included students’ background information, namely, which group the students were tracked into at the 7th grade, their gender, and how long they had learned English before they entered junior high school. There were 12 questions in Part Two, as shown in Table 9.
Table 9 Interview questions for students
Item Content Item Number
How did students feel when they were grouped to Group A/Group B in
the first semester of the 7th grade and what made them feel that way? QS1 Ask students to describe the classroom situation of their group (Group A
or B). QS2
How did students feel when they transferred to another group in the
second semester? (For Group Transfer only.) QS3
Ask students to describe the classroom situation of their group in the
second semester if they had transferred. (For Group Transfer only.) QS4 Ask students to describe their interaction with peers from the same
homeroom class in grouped class. What were the effects on English learning and why?
QS5
Ask students to describe their interaction with peers from other classes in
grouped class. What were the effects on English learning and why? QS6 What were the effects of ability grouping on students’ English learning
and why? QS7
How did students feel about having English in the ungrouped class at the
8th grade and what made them feel that way? QS8
Ask students to describe the classroom situation in ungrouped class. SQ9 (table continues)
Table 9 (continued)
Ask students to describe their interaction with homeroom peers in class.
What were the effects on English learning and why? QS10 What were the effects of mixed-ability grouping on students’ English
learning and why? QS11
Did students prefer ability-grouped classrooms or mixed-ability
classrooms? And why? QS12
The Interview Questions for Parents
To gain a more in-depth understanding of parents’ opinions and attitudes towards ability grouping practiced in English teaching, the researcher conducted parent
interviews to get more detailed information that might not be revealed in the parent questionnaires. Among the 170 valid returned questionnaires used for the analysis in the present study, the researcher interviewed ten who were willing to receive
interviews through telephone.
The interview questions (see Appendix H) consisted of 2 parts. Part One included students’ background information, namely, students’ sex, which group students were tracked into at the 7th grade, and how long students had learned English before they entered junior high school. There were 5 questions in Part Two, which are shown in Table 10.
Table 10 Interview questions for parents
Item Content Item Number
Describe students’ English academic or learning performance in 7th
grouped English class. QP1
Did ability grouping help students’ English learning and why? QP2 Describe students’ English academic or learning performance in 8th
ungrouped English class. QP3
Did mixed-ability grouping help students’ English learning and why? QP4 Do parents support ability grouping practiced in junior high school
English class? And why? QP5
Data Analysis Procedures
There were two sets of data in this study. One set came from the questionnaires and the other from the interviews.
The Quantitative Data from Questionnaires
Responses on student questionnaires (from Questions 1 to 47) and parent questionnaires (from 1 to 3) were scored on a four-point Likert scale. “Strongly agree” was scored 4, “agree” 3, “disagree” 2, and “strongly disagree” 1. The answers to Question 48 in student questionnaires and to Question 4 in parent questionnaires were coded as follows: 1 for “grouped classroom,” 2 for “ungrouped classroom,” and 3 for “not sure.” All of the data were computerized using SPSS.
The quantitative analysis looked at students’ and parents’ attitudes and preferences towards English learning in grouped and ungrouped situations.
Descriptive statistics, including means (M), and standard deviations (SD), were computed to summarize students’ perceptions about the stigma attachment, affective effects in grouped and ungrouped classrooms, students’ attitudes towards teaching, learning, in-class interaction in grouped and ungrouped classrooms, and students’
general responses to their grouped and ungrouped classrooms.
Moreover, analysis of variance for repeated measures would first be used to scrutinize if there was any interaction effect existing between students’ groups, i.e., A, B, and Transfer, and their responses to the 2 different learning situations, i.e.,
grouping and ungrouping. That is, ANOVA repeated measures would be used to examine the three groups of students’ responses to the following pairs of questions:
questions 1 vs. 24, 5 vs. 27, 6 vs. 28, 7 vs. 29, 8 vs. 30, 9 vs. 31, 10 vs. 32, 11 vs. 33, 12 vs. 34, 13 vs. 35, 14 vs. 36, 15 vs. 37, 16 vs. 38, 17 vs. 39, 18 vs. 40, 19 vs. 41, 20 vs. 42, 21 vs. 43, and 22 vs. 44. These pairs of questions enquired students’
perceptions and attitudes towards grouping classes as opposed to ungrouping classes.
When an interaction effect was found to exist in a pair of questions, one-way ANOVA and/or repeated measures would be further conducted to test simple main effects.
One-way ANOVA was conducted to see if there was any significant difference
between students of different groups when they were in grouped or ungrouped classes.
Repeated measures was carried out to examine if students of the same group had significantly different responses to grouped and ungrouped classes. The grid of the mixed design is shown in Table 11.
Table 11 The grid of the mixed design
Within Groups Attitudes towards
Grouped Class
Attitudes towards Ungrouped Class
Group A
Items 1, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17,
18, 19, 20, 21, 22
Items 24, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39,
40, 41, 42, 43, 44 Group B (the same as above) (the same as above) Between
Groups
Transfer (the same as above) (the same as above) For questions that did not compare the two learning conditions, i.e., 2, 3, 4, 23, 25, 26, 45, one-way ANOVA was conducted to see if there was any significant difference in attitudes and perceptions between students of different groups.
Those students who had experienced only Group A were required to respond to Question 46, and those who had experienced only Group B were required to respond to Question 47. Students of Transfer were required to respond to both questions. For the two questions, t-test was used to see if there was any significant difference between Group A and Transfer and between Group B and Transfer.
For Question 48, Chi-square test was used to see if there was any relationship between variables, such as groups, sex, and years of English learning, and students’
preferences towards grouped or ungrouped English class.
For parents’ questionnaires, descriptive statistics, including means (M), and standard deviations (SD), were computed to summarize parents’ attitudes towards ability grouping. For Questions 1 to 3, one-way ANOVA was used to see if there was any significant difference in parents’ perceptions by students’ groups (Group A, Group B, and Transfer). For Question 4, Chi-square was used to see if there was any
relationship between variables, such as student’s groups, sex, and years of English learning, and parents’ preferences towards grouped or ungrouped English class.
The Qualitative Data from Interviews
Qualitative data mainly came from teachers, administrators, students, and parents.
The interviews were recorded and transcribed for analysis. The data from English teachers was used to examine the teaching strategies they used in grouped and
ungrouped classrooms, to explore the difficulties they encountered in the two different teaching situations and how they coped with them, and then to find out the teachers’
preferences towards either grouped or ungrouped classrooms and potential causes of their preferences.
The data from homeroom teachers were used to get more information about students’ and parents’ reactions to the 2 kinds of learning situations and to know about the homeroom teachers’ observations and opinions, which may help the researcher look at the issue more thoroughly.
Administrators related to ability grouping system included the director of students’ academic affairs, the chief of curriculum section, and the chief of registry section. Their interview data were used to understand how ability grouping influenced school administration and the administrators’ perceptions of teachers’ and parents’
responses to the policy.
Forty selected students and 10 parents were interviewed. The data were used to
scrutinize the effects of ability grouping, which might not be explored by means of questionnaires, and further find out the potential effects of ability grouping on students.
