Peer tutoring among elementary students: educational benefits to the tutor

Utilizing Peers to Support Academic Learning for Children With Autism Spectrum Disorder

The inclusion of students with autism spectrum disorder in academic settings is becoming more common. However, most practices focus on increasing social skills even though students also struggle in academic areas. There is a need for strategies that address both social and academic skill deficits, are evidence based, and are easy to implement in the classroom. Peer-mediated interventions have evidence supporting their use in promoting social and academic behavior change and are socially valid and cost-effective. The purpose of this paper is to present examples of how to implement 2 common peer-tutoring strategies: Classwide Peer Tutoring and Peer-Assisted Learning Strategies. Examples for implementing both strategies are provided using a hypothetical student in a general education setting, followed by a brief summary of evidence supporting the peer-mediated academic instruction.

Special Educators as Single-Subject Researchers

This paper presents some basic guidelines for planning and conducting single-subject research in special education classrooms, and argues that single-subject research procedures are conceptually compatible with special education practices. Teachers seldom implement their own experiments and in general do not recognize the relevance of research to special education. As one contribution toward rectifying this problem, this paper highlights three basic steps for doing single-subject research in applied special education settings: selecting appropriate target behaviors, designing observational assessment procedures, and selecting cost-effective means for data collection that can be conducted by classroom personnel.

Peer Tutoring of Below Average Secondary School Readers Using Pause, Prompt, and Praise: The Successive Introduction of Tutoring Components

Five tutor-tutee pairs of 13-year-old students who were below average in reading participated in a program of remediated reading using the Pause, Prompt, and Praise procedures. Whereas previous research has shown that these procedures can be learned concurrently by peer tutors, this study showed that the procedures can also be learned successively. Data indicate that the five tutors readily learned to implement all components of the procedure, and that both tutors and tutees made major gains in reading accuracy and comprehension.

“Hey Dad, Watch Me”: The Effects of Training a Child to Teach Pain Management Skills to a Parent With Recurrent Headaches

This study examines the efficacy of a cognitive-behavioural program for recurrent headaches which was first implemented with an 8-year-old boy suffering from headaches. The child was subsequently trained to implement the same intervention with his father who also suffered from headaches. The treatment involved pain management skills, such as relaxation training, imagery, positive self-talk, and distraction techniques. In addition, a parent contingency management component involving the mother was employed. The treatment intervention was sequentially introduced to the child and father in a nonconcurrent multiple-baseline across-subjects design. Headache diaries and self-report measures were completed by both clients. From pre- to posttreatment there was respectively a 92.5% and 86.7% improvement in headache frequency, a 67% and 85% improvement in mean headache intensity and a 89.44% and 28% improvement in headache duration. Three-month follow-up data showed that both subjects had 100% improvement rates on all headache measures. The results highlight that some children can successfully teach their parents pain management skills. Possible implications of the results for the treatment of families, where multiple family members suffer from pain, are discussed.

Teaching math skills to at-risk students using home-based peer tutoring

Home-based peer tutoring was used to teach math skills to 4 girls with deficits in mathematics and histories of abuse or neglect. Girls living in the same home formed tutoring dyads, and each participant served as both the peer tutor and the tutee during the course of the study. At the initiation of the tutoring intervention, an expert tutor provided multiple 3-min tutoring sessions to the designated peer tutor on three or four mathematics skills. The peer tutor concurrently provided 3-min tutoring sessions on the same skills to the tutee using a multiple baseline design. Results showed that participants improved their performance on all target skills. Additional interventions were implemented for some skills to improve accuracy further. Maintenance tests were also administered after 3 to 5 months of no practice on the skills. Results showed that tutors and tutees maintained their accuracy on 7 of the 12 skills assessed.

A multiple baseline analysis of the effect of peer tutoring on the academic performance of a second grade child with learning disabilities

A multiple baseline, single-subject design was employed in the analysis of the academic performance of a second grade girl labeled "learning disabled." Peer tutoring combined with praise led to a significant improvement in solving mathematics problems requiring regrouping, word recognition, and ability to locate specific text pages.

Field replication of classwide peer tutoring

We conducted a large-scale field replication study of classwide peer tutoring applied to spelling instruction (Greenwood, Delquadri, & Hall, 1984). Two hundred and eleven inner-city students in four schools participated during their first- and second-grade school years. The effects of classwide peer tutoring were compared to teacher instructional procedures and pretest probes using a group replication design (Barlow, Hayes, & Nelson, 1984). Analysis of group and individual results indicated that (a) both teacher instructional procedures and classwide peer tutoring were effective in increasing spelling performance above pretest levels, (b) peer tutoring produced statistically greater gains relative to the teachers' procedures for both low and high student groups formed on pretest levels, (c) these outcomes were representative of groups, classes, individuals, and years during the project, and (d) participant satisfaction with the program was generally high. A separate analysis of the social importance of treatment outcome revealed differential findings for low and high groups related to pretest levels. Implications of these findings are discussed.

Overcorrection of spelling deficits in moderately mentally retarded children

The present study focused on the acquisition and retention of spelling by moderately mentally retarded children who had not been taught any spelling skills as a part of their academic curriculum. Overcorrection plus positive reinforcement was used as the teaching technique with four children in a multiple baseline design. During training the teacher pronounced the target word and the child wrote the word, saying aloud each letter as it was written. If the word was spelled incorrectly, the following procedure was undertaken: The teacher pronounced the word again, the subject pronounced the word, the teacher said aloud each letter of the word, and the subject said aloud each letter of the word as he or she wrote the word correctly. This sequence was repeated five times following a misspelled word. The results showed that all four children rapidly learned to spell the target words and maintained correct spelling of the words during the six-month follow-up period.

Role reversals: an analysis of therapeutic effects achieved with disruptive boys during their appointments as peer monitors

Three 7-year-old boys with histories of negative interactions were appointed to monitor individual classmates during daily noon recess. As monitors, the boys awarded points to their classmates for playing appropriately and, on rare occasions, withdrew a point for negative interactions. The three boys immediately decreased their own rates of negative interactions during the sessions in which they were appointed as monitors. Two of the boys concomitantly increased their rates of positive interactions. Their reductions in negative interactions were not maintained during reversals and did not clearly generalize to the morning or afternoon recess periods. Subsequent appointment of the boys as peer monitors during the morning recess produced similar improvements in their behavior. Results suggest that appointment to the role of peer monitor may itself function as an intervention.

Reading gains for underachieving tutors and tutees in a cross-age tutoring programme

A cross-age peer tutoring programme in reading is described in which three underachieving 10- to 11-year-old students tutored three underachieving 6- to 8-year-old students. The programme, a modification of the 'paired-reading' technique of Morgan and Lyon, involved both concurrent modelling of correct reading and praise for reading independently by peer tutors. When given general instructions to help, tutors did provide some assistance, but specific training was necessary before appropriate tutoring behaviours were used. Both tutees showed marked improvements in oral reading and comprehension on classroom exercises and standardised reading tests.

Improving spelling performance by imitating a child's errors

Various self-correction procedures have been used to improve spelling performance oflearning handicapped students, but few studies have been concerned with qualitative changes in spelling attempts during intervention. This study focused on both the qualitative and quantitative changes in spelling performance of a learning disabled student whe a contingent imitation and modeling procedure was used. Sufficient number of trials were allowed to assure learning. Results indicated significant improvement in the number of correctly spelled words. On a test for transfer, using orthographically and phonetically similar words, performance was slightly improved over pretest performance on the training list. However, analysis of error quality revealed substantial improvement in ability. Effectiveness of the imitation and modeling procedures was replicated. The data also extended previous work by providing a basis for explaining effectiveness of these procedures for spelling instruction. The usefulness of a problem-solving model of spelling acquisition in learning handicapped students is discussed. However, caution is advised when using this procedure since some students may view contigent imitation and modeling as punishing.

Teacher- versus peer-mediated instruction: an ecobehavioral analysis of achievement outcomes

In three experiments, we compared the effects of instructional arrangements that varied in: teacher versus peer mediators, methods used, levels of student academic responding generated, and content taught and tested. Instructional arrangements (i.e., tasks, structure, teacher position, teacher behavior) and students' levels of academic responding were measured by an observation system which served as an index of the independent variables. Students' accuracy on weekly spelling, arithmetic, and vocabulary tests and pre- and post-standardized achievement tests (Experiments 2 and 3 only) were the dependent variables. Results indicated that the classwide peer tutoring, compared to the teacher's procedure, produced more student academic responding and higher weekly test scores, regardless of treatment order or subject matter content (Experiment 1). The four lowest performing students in each class, in particular, benefited from peer tutoring, often performing as well as the other students. These findings were replicated in Experiments 2 and 3 wherein content taught/tested was also manipulated. Standardized test score gains were higher in those areas in which peer tutoring was used longest. Issues related to the functional analysis of instruction and achievement gain are discussed.

Positive peer pressure: the effects of peer monitoring on children's disruptive behavior

Classroom peers can serve as powerful sources of reinforcement in increasing or maintaining both the positive and negative behaviors of their classmates. In two experiments, we examined the effectiveness of a peer-monitored token system on reducing disruption and nonparticipation during a transition period of a kindergarten class for behaviorally impaired children. Additionally, the effect of providing and subsequently withholding corrective feedback to peer mediators on the accuracy of their point awards was evaluated. Results in Experiment 1 suggest that both teacher- and peer-monitored interventions were successful in decreasing disruption and increasing participation of monitored peers. Experiment 2 further demonstrated that peer monitors could successfully initiate the token system without prior adult implementation. Analysis of the point awards in both experiments indicates that peer monitors consistently awarded points that were earned. However, when corrective feedback was withdrawn the peer monitors frequently awarded points that were not earned, i.e., they rarely withheld points for undesirable behavior. Even so, the monitored peers' disruptive behavior was maintained at low rates.

Collateral gains and short-term maintenance in reading and on-task responses by inner-city adolescents as a function of their use of social reinforcement while tutoring

Two experiments are reported concerning the effects of the differential use of verbal approval by problematic adolescents serving as tutors in a remedial reading program for an inner-city school. The experiments, each with 3 tutors and 15 tutees, used a combined multiple baseline and ABCBC design. Data showed that tutors' approvals as well as tutors' and tutees' on-task and reading responses were low and stable during baseline. Tutors were trained to use verbal approval for tutees' on-task behavior. Tokens were presented and withdrawn to control the tutors' use of approval. During phases in which tutors' approvals were raised via token dispensation, tutor reading and on-task scores increased in a nonexperimental setting. Tutee reading scores also increased as a function of tutor approvals. The second experiment replicated these findings and, in addition, (a) tested the validity of changes in reading responses via standardized tests, (b) isolated and compared the covariance between variables in all phases, and (c) provided data on tutee attention to tutors as a possible natural reinforcer for short-term maintenance found in both studies. Data are discussed as evidence that tutors had acquired the ability to recruit reinforcement from the classroom for appropriate behavior.

A token system for a class of underachieving hyperactive children

Using a BAB design, a token system requiring cooperative interaction was used to change the reading and vocabulary performance of an 18-member class of third-grade hyperactive boys. Four different colored tokens, which could be exchanged for 15 minutes of play on electrovideo games, were earned by successful completion of two tasks that involved learning to read and to use new vocabulary words in sentences, and two tasks in which the student served as a proctor to a student who had not yet completed those tasks. The mean number of tasks completed during the intervention periods rose to over nine times the number completed during reversal. Additionally, the average completion rate for the school district's standardized weekly reading level examinations rose from four to eight fold during the token conditions. All 18 students responded to the token program by increasing their academic performance.