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Abstract

This paper offers an engagement, through an inclusive education lens, with the theoreticalframeworks and concepts used in multigrade teaching and learning. With the aim of developingand extending thinking about pedagogies in diverse education settings, it employs a scopingliterature review to identify and examine the various conceptual frameworks which underpinthinking about and practice within multigrade classrooms. It is argued that close study of theknowledges used by teachers in multigrade classrooms, which are implicitly diverse educationspaces, offers a useful way with which to consider pedagogies in all diverse education settings.Study of multigrade classrooms also offers space to develop understanding of the tensions forinclusive education generated through ‘mainstream’ organisation of schooling as single ageclasses. Emerging in the body of literature resulting from the scoping study are five ‘knowledgeterritories’ which appear to be contributing to the work of educators in multigrade settings: Childcentred approaches, constructivist thinking; inclusion; cooperative and collective education;Education for All. Through the process of working together with the five strands, looking at wherethey overlap and interact, we suggest that it is possible to assemble a ‘core pedagogik’ formultigrade classrooms. The article concludes with arguments for the potential of and capacity formultigrade settings to be productive spaces for development of pedagogical practices and theoretical understandings of all diverse classrooms.

Publication Date

2025-06-26

Publication Title

International Journal of Educational Research

Volume

133

ISSN

0883-0355

Acceptance Date

2025-06-11

Deposit Date

2025-07-11

Keywords

Diverse, Inclusion, Knowledge, Mixed age, Multigrade, Pedagogy, Theoretical frameworks

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