How does ability grouping play an integral role in the self-fulfilling prophecy?
Grouping students based on their academic abilities plays an integral part in the lower functioning students adopting a self-fulfilling prophecy, where they feel that they are unable to succeed academically. Grouping by ability decreases a student’s self-esteem when they discover that they are in the “stupid” group. This hurts their academic performance because “students must believe that they are capable of accomplishing school tasks,” (Ormrod, 143). These students don’t experience this. Students who are tracked into the lower academic groups become used to failing in the classroom and develop a resilient self-efficacy. This causes them “to have little confidence in their ability to succeed at school tasks in the future” (Ormrod, 135). This lack of confidence becomes a negative attitude towards the subject that the students are being tracked in. This negative attitude could move into other subject areas where the student feels that they are unable to perform academically. They would f
