by Calsue Murray

Created on: December 26, 2008

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-implemented peer tutorial

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