Peer Tutoring

An analysis of the ubiquitous but taken-for-granted term “rigorous academic curriculum” reveals that by definition it is not an academically rigorous term. The term contains multiple meanings, negative connotations, and a constricted conception of the school curriculum. It is associated with a discredited learning theory and in practice tends to function more as a status marker than as a substantive educational experience. We should shift our thinking and teaching away from the imprecise and potentially miseducative notion of a rigorous academic curriculum and toward the ideal of a vigorous educative curriculum.     

Peer Tutoring of Comprehension Strategies

Abstract Four low achieving 12‐year old readers were trained to tutor similar age low achieving readers in both general (monitoring) and specific (summarisation and illustration) for strategies reading comprehension. Repeated measures indicated that both tutors and tutees learned to use the strategies successfully. Use of both strategies enhanced comprehension for tutees. For tutors, there was evidence of generalisation of reading gains to their own reading. Gains made by tutors and tutees on two standardised reading tests were superior to gains made by a contrast group. Results are discussed in terms of the effects of increased academic engaged time and increased strategy use on comprehension.     

Peer Tutoring for Anatomy Workshops in Cambodia

Historical loss of staff and teaching resources in Cambodia has resulted in significant challenges to anatomy education. Small group anatomy teaching opportunities are limited. A visit to Cambodia by a teaching team from the University of Melbourne in 2010 demonstrated it was possible to implement well-resourced anatomy workshops for this purpose. However, continuation of the workshop program was inhibited by the limited number of local teaching staff. In 2015, another team from the University of Melbourne returned to Cambodia to implement anatomy workshops that incorporated peer tutoring. The objective was to improve teacher-to-student ratios and to demonstrate that interactive anatomy workshops could be delivered successfully despite low staff numbers. The anatomy workshops were attended by 404 students of Medicine, Dentistry, Nursing, and Midwifery at the University of Puthisastra. Medical students were invited to act as peer tutors for nursing students. A five-point Likert scale questionnaire was used to determine student satisfaction with both the workshops and peer tutoring. The overwhelming majority were positive about the workshops and keen for them to continue. Almost all medical students who acted as peer tutors agreed or strongly agreed that this role increased their anatomical knowledge (98%) and confidence (94%). Most nursing students agreed or strongly agreed with statements that they would like peer tutoring to continue (94%) and that they would like to be peer tutors themselves (88%). This report demonstrates that peer tutoring could be an effective tool in educational settings where poor staff-to-student ratios limit delivery of interactive workshops.     

Organising Peer Tutoring in Higher and Further Education

The Centre for Paired Learning Audio Training Pack is a distance learning resource expanding upon the organisational issues considered in this article and including a photocopiable planning guide.

The Centre for Paired Learning Video Training Pack includes useful materials for training in generic tutoring skills. These include: Preparation, Rapport Introduction and Advance Organisers, Goal Setting, Sequencing and Varying Tasks and Activities, Instructing Discussing Explaining Listening Questioning, Modelling and Demonstration, Error Detection Signalling and Correction, Structuring Thinking Time, Prompting, Praising and Rewarding, Evaluating and Assessing.     

Friendship and Task Management in Children's Peer Tutoring

The role of friendship in mediating children's learning is poorly understood, and conflicting claims exist about the manner in which friendship may influence both the process and outcome of learning. Evidence from studies on peer tutoring suggests that children acting as tutors have difficulty co‐ordinating the physical, informational and social demands of a tutoring task, due to their limited cognitive resources. Eight‐ to nine‐year‐old boys and girls were allocated to friend or non‐friend pairs in one‐to‐one tutoring dyads for the purposes of examining the impact of friendship on the process and outcome of tutoring. Although tutoring dyads of friends might be expected to focus their resources on informational components of the task, because their pre‐established relationship would minimise the burden of managing the social demands of the task, the opposite was found. Child tutors who were friends allocated additional resources to the social management aspect of the task, including monitoring tutee progress, but allocated no additional resources to imparting information about the task necessary for improving learning. Far from reducing task demands upon the tutor, friendship appears to impose greater burdens on children's limited resources, consequential upon the need to re‐negotiate their new social relationship arising from unfamiliar and unequal roles into which tutoring has thrust them.     

Organising Peer Tutoring in Higher and Further Education

This paper explores catalysts and contexts leading to a restructuring of the secondary teacher education program at Charles Sturt University in Bathurst. The Dean of the Faculty of Education and the Head of the School of Teacher Education had been involved in discussions over a number of years about the unsatisfactory nature of the ‘Dip Ed’ (see Eltis, Meyenn and Parker, 1993). The dissatisfaction was exacerbated by surveys of, and interviews with, students and by the publication in early 1994 of Shaping the Future (Wiltshire Report). There was, too, the influence of overseas developments in teacher education, particularly those that reflected a determination to ensure schools, practising teachers and universities were working in partnerships to design, implement and evaluate more relevant programs. And just as significantly, there was the close association between the School of Teacher Education and one of the local secondary schools, Bathurst High School, which heralded the possibilities of a purposeful educational partnership.     

Collaboration and Peer Tutoring in Chemistry Laboratory Education

The aim of this study is to examine the effectiveness of collaborative learning with hints and peer tutoring with hints, and individual learning with hints in chemistry laboratory education in a secondary school. A total of 96 eleventh graders participated in this study. The study has a randomized pre‐test and post‐test design with a delayed post‐test. During the four‐week intervention, students were required to carry out eight lab tasks in total. The students filled in a 17‐item self‐assessment of learning gain questionnaire on the last day. Analyses of students’ learning achievements showed that students in both the collaborative learning and peer tutoring situations outperformed those learning individually with hints. The delayed post‐test, which was administered three months later, revealed that students who had been in the peer tutoring situation outscored those in the collaborative learning situation. Student self‐assessment questionnaires on learning gain provided further details in this regard.     

朋辈辅导在学业困难学生帮扶中的案例

面对高校学业困难学生特征的多样性和复杂些局面,朋辈辅导是帮扶学业困难学生的有效措施之一。通过运用案例分析方法,结合朋辈辅导相关知识,选择合适的朋辈辅导学生,全方位开展帮扶工作,取得较好效果,并为以后推广朋辈辅导积累了经验。     

Peer Tutoring for College Students with Disabilities

In an exploratory study, peer tutoring in higher education is examined for students with visual impairment and students with learning disability (LD). Data were collected by means of interviews and focus groups. Findings indicate both academic and social benefits for tutees and tutors. Difficulties encountered are discussed, and differences between the two populations are raised. It is suggested that the visibility and complexity of the student's disability affected the tutoring encounter. Professional guidance is suggested as a means of reducing tutoring problems and increasing benefits.     

论朋辈辅导在心理危机干预中的作用

朋辈心理辅导员是高职院校危机干预工作的重要潜在资源。引入朋辈辅导理念,将有助于进一步完善高职院校心理危机干预体系。朋辈危机干预的过程可分为四个阶段:观察了解,发现问题;及时报告,建立反馈;采取措施,做好保护;延伸关注,提供帮助。     

Transactive Peer Tutoring: Distributing Cognition and Metacognition

ASK to THINK—TEL WHY®© is an inquiry-based model of mutual peer tutoring in which tutoring partners mediate each others' learning in a transactive manner. This tutorial model is designed as a person-plus cognitive partnership that supports the distribution of cognition and metacognition in order to promote complex, higher-level learning. This article focuses on what is being distributed during ASK to THINK—TEL WHY®© (i.e., the cognitive tasks of questioning, explaining, thinking, problem solving, as well as monitoring and regulation of learning) and how these cognitions are distributed across the tutoring pair and various aspects of their learning environment. Results of research on the effectiveness of using this model in classroom contexts has shown that the model promotes students' construction of new knowledge.     

Peer Tutoring: An Aid to Individual Instruction

In this article, the author describes a personal teaching experience that led her to incorporate improvisational drama into her English classroom. The author describes justifications for implementing drama into the classroom as well as the possible benefits gained by teachers and students. Also included are several improvisational dramatic activities and instructions for incorporating them into the English curriculum. Using drama helped to develop confidence, community, and content knowledge in the middle school classroom.     

Effects of Peer Tutoring on Abilities and Achievement

This study explored the efficacy of peer tutoring in the development of verbal and spatial abilities that helps students attain a high level of academic achievement in geography. Students studying in class VIII of five selected schools took one standardized and three self-made tests. Results indicated that peer tutoring strategy plays a significant role in increasing the verbal and spatial abilities as well as in raising the academic level of students in geography.     

试析同伴辅导对辅导者的惠育

同伴辅导是同伴之间互相帮助,并以教促学的一种合作学习方式。辅导同伴不仅有助于被辅导者,它也同样有益于辅导者。通过辅导同伴,能够提升辅导者自身的学业成就,促进辅导者人格与社会化的发展,还有利于其道德品性与行为的养成。针对当前学校中个人主义的过度膨胀,我们需要为学生营造合作互助的学习环境,提升学生的合作意识与合作技能,丰富学生合作互助的形式,在教学过程中积极运用同伴辅导这一教学方式。     

Cross–age Peer Tutoring of Thinking Skills in the High School

Teaching thinking skills has been characterised by the teacher-directed ‘embed ded’, ‘infusion’ and ‘bolt-on’ approaches, for which outcomes have been mixed. Peer tutoring in thinking skills offers a fourth way of wide applicability. This study evaluated such a method (Paired Thinking) in a high school setting. A substantial gain in reading comprehension was found for tutees. Triangulated subjective feedback indicated development in thinking skills, self-esteem and social skills for tutees and tutors. Paired Thinking appeared to yield considerable potential impact for minimal time input. Recommendations for refining organisation and for future research and practice were made.     

Peer and Cross-Age Tutoring in Math:Outcomes and Their Design Implications

This review of the literature on peer and cross-age tutoring emphasizes programs in mathematics and suggests that such programs have positive academic outcomes for African American and otherminority students as well as for White students who participate as tutors, as tutees, or both. Such programs also appear to have a positive impact on a variety of attitudinal and socioemotional outcomes, such as students' attitudes towards school, their self-concepts, and their sense of academic efficacy. This review also explores whether specific features of the tutoring programs (e.g., tutor training and amount of tutoring) or characteristics of the students (e.g., academic level prior to tutoring and gender composition of tutor-tutee pairs) affect various outcomes. Role theory is used as a theoretical framework to explain some intriguing and surprising findings (e.g., why tutors show academic gains even when they do not receive additional subject matter instruction, whylonger and/or more substantial tutoring programs may not foster greater immediate academic gains than shorter programs, and why mixed-sex pairs do not consistently reap benefits equal to those of same-sex pairs). Finally, implications of the review for the development of peer and cross-age tutoring programs are discussed.     

Promoting Success in High School World History: Peer Tutoring Versus Guided Notes

The purpose of this investigation was to compare qualitative and quantitative outcomes associated with peer tutoring versus teacher–directed guided notes in world history for secondary–level students with mild disabilities. Sixteen students with mild disabilities (15 of whom had learning disabilities) participated in a nine–week quarter of one of the two instructional conditions. The same special education teachers taught students during world history classes. Measures included pre– and posttests of reading fluency, comprehension strategies, and content tests, including end–of–chapter tests, cumulative–delayed–recall tests, and a delayed–recall end–of–year final exam covering the entire academic year. In addition, qualitative procedures were employed, including interviews of teachers and students regarding their instructional preferences. Findings indicated that students who participated in peer tutoring significantly outperformed those who participated in the guided–notes condition on content–area tests. No significant differences were obtained on oral–reading–fluency measures, but students in the tutoring condition performed significantly better at using a reading comprehension summarization strategy independently, and at remembering the strategy steps. Results of student interviews suggested that students responded positively overall to tutoring and guided notes, and provided specific relevant insights on each procedure. Students in the tutoring condition indicated that the time spent tutoring felt like one of the shortest academic quarters for them. Findings are discussed with respect to both benefits and challenges associated with implementing peer tutoring in high school special education content–area classes.     

Classifying the Evidence Base of Classwide Peer Tutoring for Students with High-Incidence Disabilities

Evidence-based reforms that emphasize the identification and implementation of empirically validated practices are at the forefront of educational research, and recently, the Council for Exceptional Children (CEC; 2014) published a set of standards for establishing evidence-based practices in special education. Although 30 years of research supports the effectiveness of ClassWide Peer Tutoring (CWPT), an instructional strategy intended to increase engagement and improve academic outcomes for students with disabilities, a formal evidence-based review has not yet been conducted on the practice. The purpose of this study is to examine whether CWPT, as developed by the Juniper Gardens Children’s Project at the University of Kansas, can be considered an evidence-based practice for academic outcomes of students with high incidence disabilities using the CEC standards. Sixteen single-case design studies met inclusion criteria; no studies addressed all the required quality indicators. Although results of multiple studies show that CWPT had positive effects, the lack of methodologically sound studies supporting the practice means that CWPT is not considered an evidence-based practice according to the CEC (2014) standards. Implications for research and practice are discussed.     

“四位一体”朋辈辅导模式在新生适应性教育的应用探讨

当前,我国大学生朋辈辅导缩影在各高校都有显现,已成为增强大学生心理素质、提高自我管理的重要形式。文章基于“四位一体”朋辈辅导模式,归纳已有的朋辈教育资料,分析新时代的新生特点,阐述“四位一体”朋辈模式的有效运用,分析在新生适应性教育中产生的积极作用,进而提高朋辈辅导的现实意义,引导学生自我管理、自我教育。