A Multi-Ability Approach to the Integrated Classroom

A Multi-Ability classroom is a set of recommendatio ns for permanent changes in the task and evaluation structure of classroorils. These changes are calculated to increase active, engaged, learning behavior of low status students and to provide detailed enriched feedback to the student on how he or she is doing on many different specific tasks. These changes are designed to modify expectations of competence held by classmates for each other and by the student for him/herself. Instead of a set of consistent expectations for competence for a student based on how smart or dumb he or she is, we introduce multiple intellectual abilities on which each child develops mixed expectations. This classroom model requires the changing of the perception and conception of human ability from unidimensional to multi-dimensional. Active steps must be taken to prevent reading achievement from being used as the index of where each child stands on what is commonly thought to be a single dimension of human intelligence. Unless strong steps are taken, what happens in many classrooms is that a child's ability in reading is used as an index to organize expectations for how competent he or she will be at a wide range of classroom tasks. This is, of course, encouraged by making reading a prerequisite for success at almost every classroom task. However, even if we set a task, such as small group discussion or a game task not requiring reading, we have collected consistent evidence that those children who are perceived to be better readers will be more active and influential than those who are perceived to be weaker readers (Rosenholtz, 1980; Stulac, 1975). This is a kind of self-fulfilli ng prophecy whereby those who are better readers expect to be better at a wide range of intellectual tasks; and those who are weaker readers expect to do poorly at a wide range of tasks. These dif