Can the benefits of peer tutoring lessen the effects of teachers shortages?

Yes

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by Calsue Murray

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Can the benefits of peer tutoring lessen the effects of teacher shortages?

"Here, let me show you!"

"Keep trying. You'll get it!"

"Don't give up!"

"That's not right!" "Do it again!"

"Wow!" "You've got it!"

"That's right!" "Way to go!" "I'm proud of you!"

Don't assume that the foregoing are quotations from professional classroom teachers. They might be. Perhaps they ought to be. It might be logical to assume that they are. However, they are not!

These quotations are among those heard coming, spontaneously, from the mouths of students teaching students. They were spoken by children, as they taught other children.

On countless occasions, over many years, I've heard these and similar phrases exclaimed by children, as they eagerly shared things that they had learned with classmates and age mates who were struggling to learn.

It has consistently been my experience that little, or no prompting is needed to get most students to participate in peer tutoring. Children are naturally avid learners. They are also naturally avid teachers. With little prompting, children will tutor other children. When they do so, they can be tireless, persistent and effective.

Peer tutoring is not some faddish, new-fangled stratagem. It has not just recently come into use. The actual roots of peer tutoring extend as far back as do the roots of civilization. Peer tutoring has been practiced, in some form, by people everywhere, as long as groups of humans have lived in groups.

A textbook definition of peer tutoring is "a system of instruction wherein learners help each other and learn (themselves) by teaching," (Goodlad and Hirst 13). It is to be understood that the word, peer, refers to someone who is of the same, or a nearly equal, status as the person being tutored and is not a professional instructor.

Not only are peer tutorial programs not a new fad, not only does their use, here in the United States, go back some two hundred years, but American Educators who first sought to use organized peer tutoring were seeking to solve the problem of insufficient financial backing to hire teachers in large numbers (Elhy et. al).

The first recorded use of a peer tutorial program in the Western World dates back to the late 1700's (Goodlad et. al. 23). The reasons why peer tutoring did not become wide-spread in U. S. Schools are unlikely to ever be fully understood. It is gratifying that the use of peer tutoring is again being advocated because its benefits are really very great.

Well-implement ed peer tutorial programs can provide significant benefits to students and also to their teachers. These are benefits in addition to the lessening of financial pressures that school systems are experiencing, as they try to hire more and better teachers.

It is now advocated that all schools, even ones with adequate numbers of competent teachers, implement peer tutorial programs because of the proven benefits that can be provided for their students.

Studies have been done that support contentions that peer tutoring is mutually beneficial to both the students being tutored and the students who are doing the tutoring. It has been found that students feel more at ease, and thus can concentrate better on their subject matter with peer tutors than they can with professional teachers or consultants (Ehly et. al. 21).

It has also been found that peer tutors help themselves increase their own understanding of the subject matter in which they tutor other students. (Ehly et. al. 21).

Students of my own, who serve as tutors to their classmates, often respond with amusement, as well as understanding, when I tell them that the reason that I, and their other teachers, seem to know and recall so much about the subjects that we teach is because we have been teaching those subjects over and over and over again. It is wonderful to observe the increased confidence displayed by students who function as peer tutors.

In addition to other benefits, well-conducted peer tutorial programs automatically become vital components of individualization and differentiation of instruction.

In my experience, one of the greatest benefits that peer tutoring provides is to relieve the pressures on constantly-harassed, overly-stressed classroom teachers.

It is not possible to adequately describe the complex mixture of feelings of anger, guilt and helplessness that besets teachers when they realize that they simply do not have time to work, one-on-one, with the students who need them most. Competent, efficient peer tutors provide blessings that every caring teacher deserves to experience.

A prime goal of teachers needs to be to teach each of their students well enough for every one of them to become successful tutors for their peers. Peer tutoring should be recognized as a crucial component of schooling, at all levels of education.

The benefits of peer tutoring can provide viable answers to problems of teacher shortages and of sub-standard education in our nation's schools.

Data sources:

Goodlad, Sinclair, and Beverly Hirst, Tutoring: A Guide to Learning by Teaching. New York: Nichols Publishing, 1989.

Ehly, Stewart, W. and Stephen C. Larsen, Peer Tutoring for Individualized Instruction. Boston: Allyn and Bacon, Inc. 1980.

http://wrt-intertext ,syr.edu/VIII/dabkow ski,html

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