The goal of this study was to describe the potential educational opportunities that lie in self-directed age-mixed interactions among children and adolescents. A qualitative analysis was used to generate ideas about goals and benefits of such interactions. The setting for the study was Sudbury Valley School (Massachusetts), a private school with…

Examined age and gender mixing among students, ages 4-19, at an ungraded, self-directed, democratically structured school. Found that age mixing was more frequent for 12- to 15-year-olds than for younger or older students, and that gender mixing was less frequent for 8- to 11-year-olds than for any other age group. (MDM)