Streamed project work: Letting everyone rise to the challenge

Abstract

The main educational modifications used for gifted and talented students are enrichment and acceleration. These strategies are widely discussed in the literature in the primary and secondary education sectors. Where programs for talented or higher-achieving students do exist in the tertiary sector, enrichment is the most common approach with acceleration occasionally employed. Another alternative is the use of streaming or ability grouping, such as we find in the NSW state school system. We describe and discuss the merits of an approach which streams students according to their academic record, specifically the use of grade point averages (GPA) to allocate Information and Communication Technology (ICT) students into two separate final year compulsory project units. After presenting the differences and features of the advanced stream versus the basic stream we also consider two main issues that ability grouping raises: homogenous versus heterogeneous groups and the Australian cultural value of egalitarianism.