Peer Tutoring
1 Selection of Peers
2 Process of Peer Tutoring
3 Advantages of Peer Tutoring
4 Limitations of Peer Tutoring
5 Classroom Management Guidelines for Peer Tutoring
6 Evaluation of Peer Performance
An effective teacher uses all available resources including the children themselves in peer
tutoring. This practice you yourself might have adopted in situations when some day one
of your colleagues might be absent and you had to handle more than one grade together at
a time. You might have adopted your own techniques to handle this situation. Sometimes
you might have taken the help of a monitor to handle the class. Sometimes you might have
split the class into various pairs who learn among themselves. Working in pairs or a group
of 4-5 children is effective in comprehension and application level activities, in either a
seat work or class discussion. For example suppose you have introduced a new concept
like multiplication in mathematics to grade four children. After your explanation of basic
principles with suitable examples you can split the class into small groups of four children per group. In each group the children may discuss the concept among themselves in their
respective group and try to apply it by doing more sums. After, sometime the groups can
combine and may discuss the problems, which they faced, with their teacher.
This process is simple and promotes high level of students’ involvement even in large
classes.
All these techniques are part of ‘peer tuition’ procedure. Peer tutoring has been defined by
Goodled and Hirst (1999) as “The system of instruction in which learners help each other
and learn by teaching”. Therefore, it is a method of offering individual (one-on-one)
instruction in the regular classroom by using peers (or classmates) to teach their peers.
The student who teaches is the tutor and the student being taught is the tutee. Peer tutoring
has two specific benefits. First, it provides ample opportunity for individualized instruction,
which is effective for all teaching situations especially for skill learning. Second, it can be
motivational for both the tutor and the tutee. Helping someone is intrinsically motivating
for the tutors (Salvin, 1995), and it also benefits the tutee as he/she is often able to learn
more effectively from a fellow student than from the teacher. Among the other advantages
of peer tutoring are, that, the tutor models appropriate academic and non-academic
behaviour of the tutee and the relationship between the two children (tutor and tutee) offer
both of them an opportunity to build social relationships within the classroom. Furthermore,
peer tutoring as a group activity helps to reduce the workload of teacher and also facilitates
students in their learning.
The idea of students helping students is not new. Gurukulas of ancient India, ancient
Greeks and Romans utilized the services of brighter students for helping their peers. In the
nineteenth century England exercised this method because of higher pupil teacher ratio
(400 or 500:1). Teachers coped with this situation first by teaching monitors who worked
with younger students. Teachers in America’s one room school houses also resolved their
problems of handling multiple grades at a time by utilizing the services of elder and more
capable students for helping others.
1 Selection of Peers
The peer-tutoring group is formed by bringing intelligent, average and weak
children together. Two primary peer tutoring arrangements are popularly used. Cross-age
tutoring is one in which an older child helps younger children. It benefits from the
matured tutor’s knowledge and skills but is difficult to manage logistically. The tutor’s
own studies may suffer badly as he/she has to be pulled out of his/her own class to help
other students.
Same age/grades peer tutoring is another arrangement which can be used in a heterogeneous
class in which students are at different levels of learning. Since they are of the same age
group, they constitute a cohesive group. Peer tutor is generally selected by the student
themselves under the guidance of their teachers. Anyone who is best in a particular field
becomes the tutor of the group for that particular activity. In a group situation a high
achieving student in one subject may be selected to help other students. This student in
turn may seek the help of other high-achieving students in other subjects in his own area
of deficiency. Let us explain it with the help of an example. Suppose student A of your
class is very good in Maths but comparatively weak in language. He may tutor his group
in Maths but seek help of student B of the same group who is good in language. In this
way both students are benefitted by each other.
Sometimes a peer tutor may be self-appointed by his co-student. For example, if children
are engaged in writing a paragraph in language and one of the chilclren faces difficulty in
writing a particular word, he himself can seek help of this costudent who has written the
word correctly.
Peer group strategy helps in sustaining the interest of children. It also helps in increasing
individual attention of children. It helps children to progress at their own pace and seek immediate guidance whenever required. However, as a teacher you should constantly monitor the progress of children and provide them necessary guidance.
2 Process of Peer Tutoring
In order to adopt tutoring in your classroom you ought to be well-oriented with the process
of peer-tutoring. The process of peer-tutoring includes two phases: Planning and
implementation, each having four steps.
Planning Peer Tutoring
-Identify a topic
-Prepare instructional material
-Assign instructional material
-Assign children to pairs
-Train children to be effective tutors
-Identify the Topics
Identification of suitable topics for peer tutoring is the first and crucial step. As a tcacher
you have also to decide the size of a group in peer tutoring, one-to-one pairs or tutoring in
small groups of four to six children. The nature and difficulty) level of a topic will determine
the size of a group. One-to-one peer tutoring can be used in any subject for whom the
topic includes convergent information with clear right or wrong answers. For example,
small multiplication, addition, subtraction and division etc. finding the longitude or latitude
of various locations, variety of grammar and spelling, rules and exercise are all appropriate
for peer tutoring in small groups. However, topics requiring higher level of divergent
thinking and complex in nature may not be more suitable for peer tutoring and need to be
handled by the teacher.
Prepare Instructional Materials
You should prepare specific ‘practice’ and ‘feedback’ exercises so that the focussed solution
of the topic at hand is possible. Research experiences have shown that student tutors are
not very effective in providing initial instruction. Hence, the instructional materials should
be properly developed so as to help the teather to monitor the progress.
Assign Childrcn to Pairs
Arranging children in different pair groups is the next step once the topic and instructional
material is finalized. One option is to pair a high achiever with a low achiever and let the
high achiever be a tutor. Another option could be reciprocal tutoring where children of
comparable ability are grouped together with turns as tutors. In this approach children
simply work together no one is formally designated as tutor. It is just studying jointly with
each student helping the other wherever such help is needed.
Training Students to be Effective Tutors
Students just like teachers require some orientation to become effective tutors (Fucheat
et.al, 1994, Salvin, 1995). While orienting the student to become effective tutors you
should bear the following points in mind.
- Explain objectives of peer tutoring to students.
- Encourage tutors to make supportive comments for incorrect answers. Such as ‘let us make another attempt’, ‘let us look at it again’, ‘let us go step-by-step’ and ‘see
- what is the first thing we did…” etc.
- Encourage a tutor to provide positive feedback to tutee. Therefore, discuss the
importance of positive feedback and provide verbal and non verbal examples of
various forms of praises like nodding the head, smiling, making positive comments
like good, very good etc. - Instruct the tutor to encourage thinking both for himself/herself and his/her partners.
This makes learning observable, providing a model for the partner and feedback for
the tutor.
Implementation of Peer Tutoring
Implementation of peer tutoring includes group presentation of the content to children,
dividing children into peer groups, assigning the task to various groups, providing
worksheets to reinforce the content you have just presented, specifying the time limit they
have for the tutoring session and clarifying expectations from them after the tutoring
session. You need to constantly keep a watch and monitor the progress of work. You as a
teacher is also excepted to ensure that the tutoring is proceeding smoothly. Provide freedom
to the groups to function as they wish and answer content questions only when the tutor is
unable to do so. If a tutor pair is not functioning at the expected level, rearrange the pair
to the advantage of children.
3 Advantages of Peer Tutoring
l Peer tutoring helps in accomplishing individualized instruction.
l If peer tutoring is frequently used, each child may get an opportunity to become a
tutor for some activity and for other activities they may be receiving assistance. This
provides an opportunity for self-evaluation to children and determine their own
capacity to accept or to provide help.
l It encourages self-learning and develops independent study habits, when children
make plans for the work at teaching, they became more effective learners themselves.
l It develops a sense of responsibility and accountability among children.
l It also helps in developing mutual respect, socialization and understanding for each
other as children, plan and work together. Children take pride in teaching others and
assure pride in teaching-learning. As children become involved in teaching other
children they begin to feel good about asking for offering each other help.
Competitiveness is replaced by cooperation as students work together in learning
teams.
4 Limitations of Peer Tutoring
Children especially at the primary level do not have the necessary skill to teach other
children. Some skills are required for tutoring and therefore, the tutoring process needs to
be taught. However, in practice the students are just assigned the task without any prior
training, which may have a negative impact on learning. Therefore, as a teacher you must
develop a step-by-step process for the tutor to implement.
Another problem is that the desired learning behaviour may not be achieved by the children
as precisely as visualized by the teacher. To remove this problem you will have to orient
the tutor
6 Evaluation of Peer Performance
Evaluation or peer performance is essential for two basic reasons. As a teacher you plan
any activity keeping in mind certain objectives to be achieved through that activity. Naturally
you may be interested in knowing the extent to which that objective has been achieved
through a particular activity. This may also provide feedback on the success of strategies
adopted by you to achieve a particular learning objective. If you feel that an activity has
not been able to achieve desired learning among students you may change/modify this
activity accordingly.
The crucial question, therefore is how to assess the performance of peers. You may gather
evidence of learning primarily in three ways. You can focus upon:
l The actions the students take (what they do), such as how they arrived at their decisions
or how they were engaged in-group work.
l Their responses to your questions or their contribution in group work (what they
actually say).
l The actual product of their learning in terms of writing, drawing, models, charts,
project work etc. (what they actually record).
You can adopt any of these sources of learning evidence either in isolation or in different
combination or all together. The strategy, which you adopt, should be based on the objective
of group work and techniques adopted for group work.
You may also adopt a method such as carefully supervising the groups when children are
engaged in group work listening to what children have to say, you can listen to children
talking to one another in groups, to one child talking to another, and to children reporting
back to the groups etc.
The following points should be kept in mind to ensure effective assessment.
I. Identify objectives of learning specifically so that you are clear what you want the
children to learn.
- Choose the activity to observe.
- Record the activity, briefly noting the skills, knowledge and process to be assessed.
- Do not try to observe too many children in one session.
S. Share your assessment with the children and encourage them to be self-critical. - Note down any individual needs for extension or reinforcement that you have observed.
- Plan further action based on the feedback you get.