Nongraded Schooling

The three main authors in the nongraded theoretical literature are John Goodlad, Robert Anderson, and Barbara Pavan. Goodlad and Anderson published the book "The nongraded elementary school" in 1959 (Goodlad and Anderson, 1959), followed it with a revised version in 1963, and a reissue in 1987, which added an update to the full text of the 1963 edition. Pavan wrote a dissertation on the topic which provided a specific listing of the assumptions of nongradedness. As part of the process, Pavan went through a sort of "content validity" test, consulting various experts on the field of nongraded education.. They are specifically listed and endorsed in goodlad and Anderson (1987) and expanded in Anderson and Pavan (1992). Since even the original version is quite extensive, only that version is included here.

The Conceptual Model (Pavan 72, Goodlad and Anderson, 1987, incorporated in Anderson and Pavan, 1992).

I. Goals of Schooling

1. The ultimate school goal is to develop self-directing autonomous individuals.

2. The school should help develop individual potentialities to the maximum possible.

3. Each individual is unique and is accorded dignity and respect. Differences in people are valued. Therefore the school should strive to increase the variability of individual differences, rather than stress conformity.

4. Development of the child must be considered in all areas: aesthetic, physical, emotional, and social, as well as intellectual.

5. Those involved in the school enterprise are co-learners, especially teachers and students.

6. The school atmosphere should allow children to enjoy learning, to experience work as pleasurable and rewarding, and to be content with themselves.

II. Administrative-Organizational Framework

A. Vertical Grouping

7. Each individual works in varied situations where he or she will have opportunities for maximum progress. There are no procedures for retention or promotion, nor any grade levels.

8. A child's placement may be changed at any time if it is felt to be in the best interests of the child's development considering all five phases of development: aesthetic, physical, emotional, and social, and intellectual.

B. Horizonal Grouping

9. Grouping and subgrouping patterns are extremely flexible. Learners are grouped and regrouped on the basis of one specific task and are disbanded when that objective is reached.

10. Each child should have opportunities for work with groups of many sizes, including one person groups, formed for different purposes.

11. The specific task, materials required, and student needs determine the number of students that may be profitably engaged in any given educational experience.

12. Children should have frequent contact with children and adults of varying personalities, backgrounds, abilities, interests, and ages.

III. Operational Elements

A. Teaching materials-Instructional

13. A wide variety of textbooks, trade books, supplemental materials, workbooks, and teaching aids must be available and readily accessible in sufficient quantities.

14. Varied materials must be available to cover a wide range of reading abilites.

15. Alternate methods and materials will be available at any time so that the child may use the learning style and materials most suitable to his or her present need and the task at hand (including skill building, self-teaching, self-testing, ans sequenced materials).

16. A child is not really free to learn something she or he has not been exposed to. The teacher is responsible for providing a broad range of experiences and materials that will stimulate many interests in the educational environment.

B. Curriculum (knowledge)

17. The unique needs, interests, abilities, and learning rates, styles, and patterns of each child will determine his or her individual curriculum. Conformity and rigidity are not demanded.

18. The Curriculum should be organized to develop the understanding of concepts and methods of inquiry more thank specific content learning.

19. Process goals will be stressed: the development of the skills of inquiry, evaluation, interpretation, application- "the skills of learning to learn."

20. Sequence of learning must be determined by each individual student and his or her teacher, since:

(a) no logical or inherent sequence is in the various curriculum areas.

(b) no predetermined sequence is appropriate to all learners.

(c) individual differences in level of competence and in interest are constantly in flux.

21. Each child will formulate his or hear own learning goals with guidance from his or her teachers.

C. Teaching Methods

22. Different people learn in different ways.

23. Learning is the result of the student's interaction with the world she or he inhabits. Individuals learn by direct experience and manipulation of their environment; therefore the child must be allowed to explore, to experiment, to "mess around," to play, and have the freedom to err.

24. The process is more important that the product. How the child learns is stressed.

25. All phases of human growth-aesthetic, physical, emotional, and social, as well as intellectual-are considered when planning learning experiences for a child.

26. The teacher is a facilitator of learning. She or he aids in the child's development by helping each one to formulate goals, diagnose problem areas, suggest alternative plans of action; provides resource materials and gives encouragement, support, or prodding as needed.

27. Children should work on the level appropriate to present attainment and should move as quickly as their abilities and desires allow them to.

28. Successful completion of challenging experiences promotes greater confidence an motivation to learn than fear of failure.

29. Learning experiences based on the child's expressed interests will motivate the child to continue and complete a task successfully much more frequently than teacher contrived techniques.

D. Evaluation and Reporting

30. Children are evaluated in terms of their past achievements and their own potential, not by comparison to group norms. Expectation differ for differnt children.

31. Evaluation by teacher and / or the child is done for diagnostic purposes and results in the formulation of new educational objectives.

32. Evaluation must be continuous and comprehensive to fulfill its diagnostic purpose.

33. A child strives mainly to improve his or her performance and develop potential rather than to compete with others.

34. Teachers accept and respond to the fact that growth patterns will be irregular and will occur in different areas at different times.

35. Individual pupil progress forms are used to record the learning tasks completed, deficiencies that need new assignments to permit mastery, and all other data that will show the child's progress in relation to past achievements and potential or that will help the teacher in suggesting possible future learning experiences for the individual.

36. Evaluating and reporting will consider all five areas of the child's development: aesthetic, physical, emotional, and social, as well as intellectual.

Sources:

Anderson, R.H., and B.N. Pavan. (1993). Nongradedness: Helping it to Happen. Lancaster, PA: Technomic Press.

Goodlad, John I. and Robert H. Anderson, The Nongraded Elementary School. 1987 Teachers College Pr.

Pavan, Barbara Nelson, Moving Elementary Schools Toward Nongradedness: Commitment, Assessment, and Tactics. Unpublished dissertation, Harvard University, 1972