Effects of Ability Grouping on Middle School Students’ Affective Outcomes

Abstract

This study examines the effects of ability grouping on students’ affective outcomes, measured by academic self-efficacy. Using nationally representative data from the Korean Education Longitudinal Study (KELS) and multilevel modeling, this study found that these effects can differ depending on whether students are assigned to advanced tracks or remedial tracks. Specifically, it is beneficial for students’ academic self-efficacy to be assigned to advanced tracks, whereas it is harmful to be placed in remedial tracks. In particular, it is noteworthy that students’ psychological characteristics can moderate these effects. This study conceptualized the students’ psychological characteristics regarding taking the lead in competition as being important, disliking to fall behind, and putting stress on comparisons and competition with other people as “competitive disposition”; then analyzed the effects of interactions between the competitive disposition and students’ track placement on their affective outcomes. As a result, this study found that high-ability students, more competitive in nature, exhibited relatively stronger negative effects when grouped according to their own abilities. That is, if a highly competitive student is assigned to an advanced class, he or she can experience considerable negative effects on his or her academic self-efficacy. However, for students on a remedial track, the interaction effects are statistically insignificant. These results imply that ability grouping can cause academic self-efficacy disparity between students assigned in an honored class and those in a remedial one. Also, the present study shows that this difference between groups can be moderated by students’ psychological factors such as competitive disposition.