In some projects, there was a clear concern for moral and political issues of teaching. Our best example of this is an action research project by Jo.
Her focus on ability grouping and standardized testing grew out of the discomfort she felt about differences with her cooperating teacher over style of teaching, methods of grading. and general beliefs about education. Working
with a “low ability” reading group (in a grade five classroom), Jo was concerned about the dislike for reading and the failure on standardized tests that characterized these students.
She began her research by reading what she could find on reading and the measurement of reading: “I came to the conclusion that what I was teaching and testing in the name of ‘reading’ were only very small components of a large
and complicated process” (p. 9).
In the process, she questioned the validity of test results, the limitations of the tests themselves and that some students are “test-wise”, as well as the prevalence of ability grouping.
Next she decided to find out what the students thought about reading, reading tests, and reading (ability) groups, by individually interviewing each student in the classroom.