Over the course of this blog series, we have looked at the important role administrators play in supporting small-group instruction and practical considerations for designing a small-group instruction strategy.
These posts were based on Scholastic Education’s Research & Validation Topic Paper “Aligning Practice with Research: Using Small Groups to Differentiate Instruction.”
For the final entry in the series, we will take a look at the research that validates the positive impact of small-group instruction.
To level set, when we refer to small-group instruction, we’re not talking about Tier 2 instruction (or any kind of small-group intervention that supplements core literacy instruction) or small-group instruction in which all groups are doing the same thing.
And while even when you’re not differentiating instruction, small groups can help:
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Increase opportunities for students to respond
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Ensure students are paying attention and experiencing accountability for engagement
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Facilitate the teacher’s provision of more individualized feedback/scaffolding
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Reduce anxiety about performing in front of a big group
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Enable the teacher to demonstrate things “up close”
However, for this discussion we are talking about differentiating small group instruction, which can accomplish all of these above and also provide instruction tailored to student needs and interests.
Ensuring that the benefits of small-group instruction are backed by research is critical—because when teachers provide instruction to individual small groups, students participate in fewer minutes of teacher-managed learning overall.
The good news is that the current scientific evidence generally finds that small-group instruction is associated with increased learning and that student agency in learning to read is important, particularly as they move beyond initial skill acquisition.
Positive overall impact and improvements in reading and preschool learning
Steenbergen-Hu et al. (2016) systematically analyzed 13 previous reviews of research on this topic and found that grouping students in K–12 based on their academic needs was associated with improved performance.
One of the reviews included by Steenbergen-Hu et al. reported effects on reading outcomes in particular: Lou et al. (1996) found that within-class grouping for reading instruction was associated with more learning than no grouping.
In addition to impacting reading outcomes, grouping students to differentiate instruction has been shown to positively impact student engagement (Connor & Morrison, 2016) and student attitudes about learning (Kulik & Kulik, 1992; Lou et al., 1996).
Connor et al. (2006) observed instruction in 34 preschool classrooms and found that learning was 10 times greater for preschoolers who were engaged in small-group code-focused instruction than for preschoolers who were engaged in whole-class code-focused instruction.
Importance of professional development
Al Otaiba et al. (2011) randomized 44 kindergarten teachers to receive either:
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Extensive professional development, coaching, and software that focused on delivery of differentiated small-group instruction (the “treatment” condition) or
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Minimal professional development, such that they mostly continued delivering their “business-as-usual" instruction (the “comparison” condition).
During the study, both groups of teachers were observed using small-group instruction, but the quality of small-group instruction differed: in the comparison group, each small group received the same instruction. In the treatment group, there was clear evidence of differentiation of instruction (i.e., each small group received something different).
Al Otaiba and colleagues reported that students in treatment classrooms (i.e., those who received differentiated small-group instruction) outperformed their peersin the comparison classrooms on end-of-year reading measures.
Impact of customized instruction
As we mentioned in the second post of this series, Dr. Carol Connor has been a key contributor to knowledge about small-group instruction and its impact on student outcomes.
Connor and her colleagues found that the impact of instruction was maximized when the content of instruction (i.e., the degree to which it was focused on cracking the code or constructing meaning) was customized to meet student needs (Al Otaiba et al., 2011; Connor et al., 2013; Connor et al., 2006).
While the magnitude varied by grade and time in the school year, Connor found that, in general, students with more knowledge or skill in a particular area benefit from more child-managed instruction, while students with less knowledge or skill in an area benefit from more teacher-managed instruction (Connor, 2011; Connor et al.,2011b).
Instruction guided by assessment
Research further shows that small-group instruction is more effective when data helps inform lesson content, the composition of student groups, and adjustments to instruction based on students’ instructional response or progress over time (Schildkamp et al., 2013).
Instruction guided by assessments has been shown to raise the quality of instruction and improve student outcomes (Al Otaida et al., 2014; Connor et al., 2013; Graue et al., 2017; Gatlin-Nash et al., 2021; Peterson et al., 2016).
Additionally, teacher intuition and informal assessments alone do not always accurately capture a student’s academic competence (Eckert & Arbolino, 2005; Timmermans et al., 2016).
For students at or above grade level who are continuing to make progress, informal assessment may be adequate for determining appropriate ways to differentiate instruction. In contrast, it may be necessary to administer multiple assessments to accurately determine the source of students’ trouble when they have difficulties (Jones, et al., 2016).
We hope this series of blog posts has given a thorough overview of the importance of small-group instruction. To read the full topic paper, click here.
