Why Multiage...

Dear Parents,

The other day I had an interesting conversation about education with a friend of mine. In essence it revolved around what makes more sense in school, structuring our classrooms so that students experience their education with a group that takes learning one step at a time, or whether schools should take advantage of the diversity of their students and structure the educational experience for each child to best match their needs. Initially, the person I was discussing this with thought that it would be best to start with specific learning goals and have all children meet those goals in certain grades and at specific times.

As you might imagine, I was of a different opinion. My argument was that just as children have growth spurts physically, they have growth spurts intellectually and socially as well. I also stated that these growth spurts don't always happen at the same time for all children. One child may have moved well beyond the norm of her age peers with spatial analysis and geometry while at the same time not being as proficient with writing persuasive letters. Teaching to the norm of a group of children would not be helpful to this child in these areas, she would likely be bored with geometry and be frustrated with persuasive writing; as her growth would not be supported in either area. A respected Russian psychologist and educational theorist by the name of Lev Vygotsky addressed situations just like this in his research, finding that children learn best when they are taught just a little bit above where they can work independently. He called this the zone of proximal development. Going too far beyond this zone doesn't allow optimal learning to occur and of course, being below this zone does not support learning other than perhaps to consolidate what has already occurred.

This discussion led to why we purposefully choose a multiage educational structure for all our classrooms here at Swan School. I told him that it's more than just academic and it's more than just a way to "do school," it's a philosophy that brings a lot of educational pieces together into an holistic approach to teaching and learning.

Put together, multiage educational practices can be seen as grounded in a philosophy that holds that every child can learn and has the right to do so at their own pace, that learning is a continuum rather than a series of steps, that diversity is not only a reality but is something to be embraced, and that a classroom is a family of learners. By purposefully structuring our classes to include a span of ages and to take advantage of the diversity, students naturally become more accepting of one another's differences. Doing this more strongly supports an atmosphere of nurturing rather than one of competition in which children pressure one another to fit an arbitrary norm. In multiage classrooms such as those we have here at Swan School (as compared to single-grade ones), teachers find themselves supporting each individual child as to their own complex set of needs rather than spending all their efforts trying to lead a group of students to complete an age-based step.

I then went on to list some of the other benefits to our multiage classrooms. Things like the flexibility to group children according to need, ability, or interest; not just by age. That problems associated with a yearly transition from one grade to another are easily overcome. That the teacher has a nucleus of children, trained in the details of the class' organization who keep it going while newcomers absorb it. That the student-teacher-parent relationship can develop over a longer period of time, allowing students to receive greater level of support for their success in school. That in our multiage classrooms a more natural learning situation is established. Children can work at their own pace because their program is not geared to the work of a single year but can be adjusted over two or more years. That there are benefits that come to the older children from the quality of leadership and responsibility they develop while young children are stimulated intellectually by older children. And finally how children have a broader social experience with increased opportunities to lead and to follow, to collaborate and to develop stable peer relationships.

As you can imagine, my friend was swayed. Now he asks, "Why isn't every classroom a multiage one?"

Russ

P.S. If you would like to find out more about Vygotsky or any of the other theorists that support a multiage educational structure, point your web browser to http://www.multiage-education.com/multiagen-b/theories.html

Russ