1.1 Thesis statement and aims
This study aims to research how teachers in English as a foreign language (henceforth EFL) classes use adapted education for pupils with higher learning potential (henceforth HLP) in Norwegian lower secondary schools. A challenge that all teachers will face in their classroom is that all their pupils are on different levels and thus need different approaches to learning, adapted to their individual level. This thesis aims to explore how HLP pupils, their parents and teachers view the adapted education in the EFL classes. Are for instance, high pupils prioritized in the EFL classes? And what can their parents tell about their children’s motivation in school? The main questions in the present thesis are:
1. To what extent do teachers in EFL classes use adapted education for pupils with HLP?
2. How do pupils with HLP experience their EFL classes?
3. What are the best teaching methods and learning strategies for pupils with HLP?
This thesis aims to explore if and how teachers use different teaching strategies to make EFL classes more relevant and motivating for pupils with HLP. It is a common issue in Norwegian schools that stronger pupils are often left to themselves and deprioritized, because the teacher has to focus on helping the weaker pupils. However, in the Directorate of Education
(Utdanningsdirektoratet, 2018: 1) it is written, in relation to educational act § 1-3, that every pupil shall receive educational instructions adapted to their own level. In relation to the
educational act § 1-3 about adapted education, this thesis aims to research if the teachers are able to meet the expectations of pupils with HLP, whilst adapting their teaching to every individual pupil in the class. To help answer the main thesis questions, additional research questions will also be explored:
• What characterizes pupils with higher learning potential?
• How do teachers organize group-work in the EFL classes?
Idsøe (2014) writes about pupils with HLP in her research on differentiated teaching, that high achieving pupils is a complex and important topic which:
“hopefully will gain more acknowledgement within research and more knowledge about teaching experience related to the most suitable strategies for differentiated teaching for all pupils” (Idsøe, 2014:156, my translation).
An important issue in this thesis is that pupils with HLP seem to be deprioritized in the
classroom. Idsøe (2014: 156) argues that this might be because the teacher prioritize the pupils who have learning difficulties and do not have the knowledge needed to help high achieving pupils.
Another reason for HLP pupils being deprioritized, is because the Norwegian school system wish to create an equal learning environment, which makes it unreasonable to prioritize the pupils who are already successful in school (Idsøe, 2014: 156). Studies also show that some teachers are reluctant toward name-tagging more “able” pupils, and Dean (1998: 5) elaborates that many teachers think that selecting and “naming” a small group of gifted children will be viewed as elitist. This does however, only work as a disadvantage to the more able pupils and the whole school, and such consequences will be explored in this thesis. In addition to exploring this thesis from a teacher’s and a pupil’s view, this thesis wants to include the perspectives from parents in this study. As Idsøe (2011: 140) argues, the parents and the school share the responsibility to educate and raise the pupils. Because the teacher might struggle to identify and educate high achieving pupils, the parents can be included in their children’s education in order to provide important information, which can be used to improve their educational offer.
1.2 Relevance and background
Børte (2016: 2) argues in their research on gifted pupils and pupils with HLP, that it has become the school’s responsibility to take care of the weaker pupils, due to the principles of equality. A consequence to this is that pupils with HLP could potentially be deprioritized in class. Børte (2016: 2) further argues that the responsibility to identify pupils with HLP lies with the individual teacher, and that teachers are not given the proper education to identify and
understand high achieving pupils. Therefore, Børte (2016) questions if Norwegian schools lack
the competence to educate high achieving pupils on their own level and help them develop their academic skills.
Another challenge on adapted education in relation to high achieving pupils, is that the education of high achieving pupils seems to be problematized in a negative way (Børte, 2016: 5). Because many high achieving pupils do not fit into the regular schooling, some teachers struggle to educate them. Instead of looking at HLP pupils as difficult or problematic pupils, one should look at HLP pupils as pupils who have other needs, and therefore need a more adapted education to their level. This thesis aims to research which needs HLP pupils have and explore which characteristics the teachers should be looking for when identifying stronger pupils. Furthermore, this thesis aims to learn how this issue about HLP pupils being deprioritized, presented in both Idsøe (2014) and Børte (2016), works in reality by interviewing both teachers and pupils about their own experience of EFL classes at lower secondary school.
In advance of this study, the researcher of this paper had experienced difficulties teaching a classroom with mixed-ability pupils. In multiple cases, one or two pupils from the different classes expressed that they were not challenged in the researcher’s EFL classes. The pupil explained that the classes were not motivating and that they did not learn anything new. Due to this feedback, the researcher got highly motivated to research how the EFL education should be adapted towards high achieving pupils. In relation to adapted education, many teachers struggle to apply this to all the pupils in the classroom. In a study related to high achieving pupils and adapted education, (Weka, 2009: 49-50), it was discovered that teachers were familiar with the term adapted education, but that they struggled to apply this in the classroom. Two of the teachers interviewed in Weka’s study (2009) mentioned “strong pupils” as pupils that were hard to include in their adaptation.
Jacobsen (2016: 2) writes in her thesis on differentiated teaching in primary school, that there is a need for more research on differentiated teaching and to gather knowledge on how adapted education should be implemented in practice. In another thesis on adapted education for high achieving pupils in primary school, Kvammen (2018: ii) confirms that there is a lack of research on adapted education towards pupils with HLP. Both Kvammen (2018) and Jacobsen (2016) researched high adapted education and high achieving pupils in primary school. There is however, to the researcher’s knowledge, not been done much research on high achieving pupils
in lower secondary school. The research topic in this study is arguably relevant to all the teachers in lower secondary school, because every teacher will meet pupils that have higher learning potential and need adapted education to their level of competence. This study mainly focuses on how the EFL classes can be adapted towards high achieving pupils: However, many of the solutions and strategies that are discovered in this thesis can be applied in other language subjects.