Designing Effective Collaborative Work Between Primary School Students with Various Educational Needs: The Case of a Russian School

Abstract

The research deals with the question of interaction of primary school students with various educational needs when learning a foreign language. Different groups of children: standard learners, children with disabilities, gifted children, non-Russian speaking immigrant learners may study in one class. When learning or while participating in extracurricular activities, they have to communicate, cooperate, interact with each other. Many teachers are unprepared for the influx of children with various educational needs within one class. Consequently, every teacher encounters the problem – how to make educational communication and collaborative work of children with various educational needs effective. The awareness of social relationships between classmates helps to organize interactive work. The article describes the results of the sociometric studies to measure social relationships within a class, which were performed in Municipal Independent State Institution Grammar school #13, Tomsk. Four groups of primary schoolchildren (76 students) who study English were tested in 2014 and 2018. The qualitative method allowed us to reveal what status each person belongs to: ‘a star’, ‘preferable’, ‘neutral’, ‘least preferable’, and ‘an outcast’, consequently, to define psychological climate in the group. Taking into account the information obtained teachers were able to form proper groups, to control and change the group members if necessary. Understanding the relationships in the group helped teachers to organize interactive work and educational communication in a more effective way. The comparative analysis of the sociometric results showed progress in the relationships between children. Effective collaborative work improved educational results as well. The research revealed the conditions: methodological, psychological, pedagogical, which facilitate positive sociometric changes.