Abstract:

Placing students in skill groups has a long history of controversy and conflicting opinions. While some studies highlighted the benefits of skill clustering (Steenbergen-Hu, Makel, & Olszewski-Kubilius, 2016), other ones have identified disadvantages (Terwel, 2005). In the case of Physical Education (PE), studies based on ability grouping showed benefits for learning, in particular, increasing motivation which helps to prevent students from losing interest due to the pace being too fast or too slow (Bygren, 2016). Although, some authors argue that students who are classified in the lower levels of ability groups do not have the opportunity to learn from their peers who are ranked in high ability groups (Terwel, 2005). Some research in PE have been shown that practice in heterogeneous small-sided groups highlights the commitment of higher-skilled students to reconstruct power relations that foster trust and caring. Here, the potential for sharing knowledge and the investment of the higher-skilled students, toward the development of gameplay performance of lower-skilled students, create better opportunities for learning improvement, independently of the students’ skill level (Hastie, Ward, & Brock, 2017).

This study aimed to compare the Game Involvement between a “mixed ability” (heterogeneous skill level) and a “grouping ability” (homogeneous skill level) students’ groups in high school within a PE hybrid unit of Sport Education and Teaching Games for Understanding.

This study followed a quantitative approach using a quasi-experimental pre-test/posttest design. The participants were 68 high-school students (38 boys and 30 girls, aged 14–18), from three physical education classes, taught by three preservice teachers (2 males and 1 female) completing a two-year master’s degree program in Teaching of Physical Education at a public university in the north of Portugal. The subject was badminton taught during a 14-lesson season based on the principles of Sport Education and Teaching Games for Understanding. The “Mixed ability” teams were heterogeneous with a mix of higher and lower skilled players and “Grouping ability” teams consisted of teams of all higher-skilled students and teams of all lower-skilled students. While the overall season format for the three classes was the same, the composition of the teams varied. Classes had physical education lessons two times a week during a period of seven weeks. The Game Involvement was calculated based on the formula developed by Gréhaigne, Godbout, and Bouthier (1997) for assessing game play.

In order to test intra-group differences from pre- to post-test, the Wilcoxon test was applied. The effect size was estimated with the r non-parametric statistic.
Results showed that grouping students by skill level (“Grouping ability”) had no impact on game involvement improvements. On the contrary, grouping students independently of their skill level (“Mixed ability”) showed significant progresses in the Game Involvement. That is, “Mixed ability” allow low-skill students to benefit from interaction with high-skill teammates, they performed from pre to post-test significant number of hits (service, above the head, and below the waist) for more challenging areas. Our study reinforces the adequacy of heterogenous skill level groups to increase the opportunities for students’ success.

Keywords:

Physical education, skill level, grouping, heterogeneous.