Sperry’s study included conversation in which child wasn’t active but was overhearing. Included more lower income families in which there are often bystanders, dialect and other community members involved and multiple caregivers- they did not exclude these interactions like Hart and Risely. 

This paper reviews research on the impact of classroom environments on student behavior, attitudes, and achievement.

‘Grouping Students by Ability Regains Favor in Classroom’ by Vivian Yee (2013)
New York Times article.
The article discusses the resurgence of grouping within America as it "become[s] indispensable, helping them cope with widely varying levels of ability and achievement." It also suggests that some studies indicate that grouping reduces self-esteem issues "by ensuring that more advanced students do not make their less advanced peers feel inadequate." It also suggests that "without it, teachers are forced to teach to the middle, leaving out both struggling children and gifted learners. They also say there is a 'peer effect,' in which high-achieving children do better if paired with other high-achieving students." - ultimately it suggests that if you support mobility across the groups and work on the same material but tailor activities and assignments to each group, children of all abilities should succeed, and their self-esteem will not be effected. You need to remove the stigma of the grouping. 

‘Some thoughts on teaching a mixed ability class’ by Susan Bremner (2008)
Article in Scottish Languages Review Issue 18 
The article suggests that teaching a mixed ability class will work if all pupils are allowed to experience success and to learn as individuals. It suggests that teaching to the 'average' child and as a whole class won't work - you need to give children space to take ownership of their learning and choice over what activities they are interested to work on rather than overly planned lessons. 

‘Ability-grouping in Primary Schools: Case Studies and Critical Debates’ by Rachel Marks (2016)
L&T instructed… 
Firstly it highlights in order to group by ability the teacher needs to make an assessment of what abilities the children have. It also quotes from Pedley that children from literate homes, with interested and helpful parents, have an enormous advantage over children from culturally poor homes where books are known and conversations either limited or unprintable.  

“Later, encountering Jo Boalers work on ability-grouping in secondary mathematics, I was thrown into turmoil as I found myself unable to defend the practices I had engaged in and as a teacher.”  

He wrote the book because a French teacher said "you're not good enough, even for the bottom set”.  

“Researching this in a primary contact, I was struck by one 8 year old Boy, Zachary telling me he was just not born clever."  

He did a study of 3 schools across a year and focused on three children within each mixed-ability class with the focus on maths. It looks at the changes in ability grouping - the butler education act of 1944 established a need for ability-grouping to work towards the 11 plus. It notes there is an apparent resurgence in ability grouping. "Further research shows that children with special educational needs and disabilities long single long-standing illnesses and those perceived by the parents as having behaviour difficulties are overrepresented in bottom sets." Similar to ages being impacted. So this is far from just grouping by current ability. 

‘Reassessing 'Ability' Grouping: Improving Practice for Equity and Attainment’ By Becky Francis, Becky Taylor, Antonina (2020)
Chapter 2 - 'Ability grouping' - What is it and why do we do it?’
"Some educational supporters of the claimant grouping reject premises of attainment is fixed or is expressing a student in a potential. Rather, they maintain attainment grouping as a practical response to a pedagogic challenge. It is beneficial to students to learn with others, presently at similar attainment level and such groups are easier for teachers to teach. Let ask all this, the pragmatic argument. And it is possible to subscribe to this without subscribing to notions of ability as inherent, or fixed" 

‘Teaching Literacy in Primary Schools Using an Interactive Whole-class Technology: Facilitating Student-to-Student Whole-Class Dialogic Interactions’ by Damian Maher (2012)
Article in Technology, Pedagogy and Education Volume 21, 2012 - Issue 1 
This article looks at different dialogic interactions between teachers and students and best practice for whole class activities. It concluded that if the teacher was able to take on the role of facilitator by making suggestions to the students and asking open ended questions as well as changing pedagogical practices to allow students to interact verbally with each other rather than via the teacher as is common in many classrooms, students were able to collaborate and critically explore their ideas in an in-depth way. The students were required to take far more responsibility for the discussions taking place and needed to ensure that they could provide feedback to other students which could then be used to produce the final text. 

 

‘Whole Class Teaching’ by headteacher Irina Tyk (2014)
A paper for the Campaign for Real Education
This says there are three models to teaching - 1) bringing dictatorship into the classroom. “The teacher declaims like a dictator and the pupils write everything down to learn by rote.” 2) Child centred learning – “Children sit in little groups, often with their backs to the teacher, working in groups or in teams. The teacher walks about from table to table, giving advice and making suggestions. In such a setting child sometimes mark each other’s work. It is called peer-marking. The teacher is facilitator. He is no longer a teacher.” 3) The teacher is in the ascendant. “It is a space in which the teacher seeks to engage the minds of every pupil, all of whom face the teacher so that they can see him as an audience watches an actor in the theatre and so that he can watch their faces, ever-ready to respond to the greater or lesser interest of his audience. The teacher is an actor. He speaks and he walks about like an actor. Sometimes he is passionate, sometimes he is humorous and sometimes he is irreverent. Sometimes he speaks the lines of learned men; sometimes he improvises. His pupils are his audience. They watch him and listen to him in rapt attention.” 

‘How might teachers enable learner self-confidence?’ by Professor Effie Maclellan (2014)
An educational review study
“Put plainly teachers need, but cannot readily access, conceptual knowledge of what self-confidence is. They further need exemplification of how self-confidence can be promoted. Equipped with these two sets of knowledge, they can then use this knowledge, adaptively, to respond to learners in their care." 

"Those whose self-concept is less clear are prone to greater self-handicapping behaviour (Thomas and Gadbois 2007)” 

It discusses how one might form a sense of self and what implications this has on self-esteem. "for teachers to support learner perseverance, they need to be substantively persuasive and genuine, rather than being gratuitously complimentary" 

"It appears that teachers who actively seek to build on what is already positive in their classrooms (and either abandon or eschew what doesn't promote previously negotiated and agreed goals) (Kelly and Bluestone-Miller 2009) are much better placed to support learners in outlining their own success and progress (Lloyd, Bruce, and Mackintosh 2012) which, in turn, is reported as improving confidence" 

"Learners who have contact with their teachers out with formal instruction, feel intellectually and emotionally more confident - with such confidence feeding back into formal instruction"