Teachers’ Voices, Pedagogy and Discursive Practices in Ability Grouping Classrooms in Delhi Government Schools

This article discusses the pedagogic practice of ability grouping in government schools in Delhi. Despite practical evidence against homogenous student settings, ability grouping is implemented as a policy solution to reduce the huge variance in students’ learning levels within a classroom. Research data is drawn from interviews with 110 government schoolteachers in Delhi, where achievement data from baseline surveys conducted by the Delhi government was used to group students. Using Bourdieu’s (1998) theoretical tools, this article explores how the objective practice of ability grouping positions teachers and their pedagogical practices as intending to obtain performance measurement. Ability grouping creates an environment for teachers in which they submit to consigning students with low achievement results to low ability classrooms. Their habitus is less empowering as teachers’ ability to be teachers and in developing their own curricular content is curtailed by ability setting. The findings of this study reveal that most of the teachers’ pedagogic practice take the shape of educational triage. This had implications for enacted pedagogies and curriculum, as there is an extensive application of the exam-oriented technique of teaching, including selective and abbreviated curriculum in low-ability classrooms as teachers selectively cover less curriculum.