From reading this week's posts, I believe that many of you support the idea of streaming, if not the practice. That is, many people think that grouping students into others who are at a similar achievement level can help them learn.
I'm not convinced, having read some research about how streaming can turn into a self-fulfilling prophecy. For those who do believe in streaming, can you tell me how you learned that this was better? What experiences, readings, philosophies, evidence, helped you decide this?
I don't have enough experience with streaming to say I believe in it or don't believe, but I do have some thoughts on ways that it could be made much better.
ReplyDeleteIn my first year of university, all science students were required to take two calculus half credits. In the first semester, we all took MATA30 together. In the second semester, there were three separate courses: MATA35 for life science students, MATA36 for physical science students, and MATA37 for math and computer science students. Academic advisors, and even some professors, usually said that the higher the number on the course code was, the harder the course. That wasn't true. I took MATA37 because I was a math student. I saw the kinds of problems that students in MATA36 did, and I am quite sure that i would have found that course much more difficult.
I think this brings up a few problems going on with the way we stream. The general ideas that people seem to have about academic and applied courses is that academic is harder and applied is easier. From what I've seen of the curriculum, this seems to be the case. However, I think that if, instead of giving students in the applied stream a watered down version of the academic content, we gave them work that was actually different, but still required critical thinking, we could both meet their learning needs and make sure we don't limit their options.
The MATA37 calculus course that I took did not give me the skills I would have needed if I later decided I wanted to pursue chemistry, just like A36 did not give students much exposure to abstract math or proofs. However, both were intellectually rigorous courses and they did not limit our options. If I had wanted to change programs I would have needed to take some courses to learn the material I had missed, but I doubt I would have been told that it was too hard.