There does not appear to be consensus on how to optimally match students during the peer feedback process: with same-ability peers (homogeneously) or different-ability peers (heterogeneously). In fact, there appears to be no empirical evidence that either homogeneous or heterogeneous student matching has any direct effect on writing performance.…

In this commentary on "Does Sorting Students Improve Scores? An Analysis of Class Composition" (Collins and Gan 2013), the author discusses the findings in Collins and Gan's study on grouping to provide appropriate-level instruction to promote students' academic growth. This commentary critiques the credibility and validity of the…

This research focused on effects of ability grouping in reciprocal teaching technique of collaborative learning on individual achievements dan social skills. The results research showed that (1) there are differences in individual achievement significantly between high group of homogeneous, middle group of homogeneous, low group of homogeneous,…

The grouping problem is critical in collaborative learning (CL) because of the complexity and difficulty in adequate grouping, based on various grouping criteria and numerous learners. Previous studies have paid attention to certain research questions, and the consideration for a number of learner characteristics has arisen. Such a multi-objective…

This study aimed to examine the influence of different types of achievement grouping on question generation. There were 46 participants from two Grade 5 classrooms. Students completed a test to determine their achievement levels. One of the classrooms was randomly assigned, to work in homogeneous achievement groups and the other one in…

Small-group, text-based discussions are a prominent and effective instructional practice, but the literature on the effects of different group composition methods (i.e., homogeneous vs. heterogeneous ability grouping) has been inconclusive with few direct comparisons of the two grouping methods. A yearlong classroom-based intervention was…

The potential for behaviourally challenged students to negatively impact typically developing students is a concern shared by many parents and teachers. However, deviant peer influence during workgroup activities has not been thoroughly investigated through systematic observation of deviant interactions. This study compares sequences of deviant…

Although a growing literature has documented the effectiveness of informal group work during class sessions, virtually no data exist on which students are collaborating. As a result, instructors rarely know whether students are self-sorting in ways that maximize learning. This article explores which undergraduate students worked together on each…

This paper introduces a blended learning context that creates a community of practice. This community of practice presents a combination of face-to-face facilitated learning, e-learning, and self-study. A set of in-class and online linguistic activities was used in the implementation of this experiment to investigate the efficacy of performing…

To date, in gifted education and related fields various conventional factor analytic and clustering techniques have been used extensively for investigation of the underlying structure of data. Latent profile analysis is a relatively new method in the field. In this article, we provide an introduction to latent profile analysis for gifted education…

This paper reports the results of an experiment designed to investigate the effectiveness of different collaborative group formations (homogeneous vs. heterogeneous in terms of prior computer knowledge levels) for learning complex tasks in computer programming from the perspective of cognitive load theory. Web-based learning platform was used to…

Drawing upon the Search for Ideas in Associative Memory (SIAM) model as the theoretical framework, the impact of heterogeneity and topic relevance of visual stimuli on ideation performance was examined. Results from a laboratory experiment showed that visual stimuli increased productivity and diversity of idea generation, that relevance to the…

The present study tests the effect of ability pairing in two instructional methods in L2 collaborative revision. Two continuous indices determine a pair: individual proficiency level, distance in proficiency between pair members (heterogeneity), and the interaction between both indices. Instructional methods tested are modelling and practising.…

In this multicountry analysis, we generate a student-level measure of socioeconomic status (SES) "mixing" to understand the benefits or pitfalls of placing low-SES children with diverse peers. We conduct this analysis separately for equal and unequal countries that provide the same curriculum to all children regardless of ability level,…

The purpose of this study was to examine the effects of heterogeneous and homogeneous grouping on the mathematical achievement of students in third grade. Participants were 16 third graders in a self-contained classroom, assigned to either small homogeneous or heterogeneous group for math instruction for 7 weeks. Pretest-posttest scores and growth…