How does ability grouping work against or even prevent the development of culture and community in the classroom?
Through interacting with others children discover what culture is about and how it interacts with and becomes part of their world. People teach each other through interactions with one another; a verbal exchange and through showing. When learners help each other learn, each according to their abilities, we have the formation of a community, in which respect, commitment and sharing are taking place. Jerome Bruner, through his extensive research, identifies the classroom as a mutual community that models ways of doing or knowing, provides opportunity for emulation, offers running commentary, provides scaffolding for novices and even provides a good context for teaching deliberately. He further states, it even makes possible that form of job-related division of labor one finds in effective work groups: some serving pro tem as memories for the others, or as record keepers of where things have got up to now, or as encourages or cautioners. The point is for those in the group to help each ot
