Increasing international attention on wellbeing places the onus on education systems to support children's positive psychosocial development. Despite broad and rich literature highlighting the limitations of implementing ability grouping as pedagogy and its impact on how children ‘do’ and ‘feel’ learning in school, this practice still persists in systems across the OECD. This Irish study draws on qualitative and sociometric data from 3 case study schools with 100 children. It explores how teachers cast an ‘invisible hand’ over children's peer networks, shaping friendships and patterns of inclusion/exclusion within the classroom. It builds on current literature in the field exploring how peer interaction is influenced by ability group assignment using network analysis. Findings also reveal the psychosocial impact of these dynamics, with children assigned to lower ability groups most impacted by lower social status, exclusion from peers and increased experience of bullying. These experiences evoked feelings of disengagement, anger and isolation.

国际社会对福祉的关注日益增加，教育体系有责任支持儿童积极的社会心理发展。尽管广泛而丰富的文献强调了将能力分组作为教学法的局限性及其对儿童在学校“做”和“感觉”学习的方式的影响，但这种做法在整个经合组织的体系中仍然存在。这项爱尔兰研究借鉴了3个案例研究学校（有100个孩子）的定性和社会计量学数据。它探讨了教师如何在儿童的同龄人网络上伸出“看不见的手”，塑造教室中的友谊和包容/排斥的模式。它以该领域的最新文献为基础，探索了使用网络分析如何通过能力组分配来影响同伴交互。研究结果还揭示了这些动态因素对社会心理的影响，将儿童分配到能力较低的人群中，这些人群受较低的社会地位，同伴排斥和欺凌经历的增加影响最大。这些经历使人产生了脱离接触，愤怒和孤立的感觉。