Two Field Studies on Cross-Age Tutoring in the School. Technical Report No. 361.

Two studies explored the effects of peer teaching on the attitudes and behavior of tutors and tutees. In the first study, fourth graders tutored third graders in reading once a day for two weeks. Another group befriended a third grader over the same period of time, supervising play activities. A control group participated in neither special situation. After the experiment, the children were evaluated through personal interviews and tests to determine how, if at all, their feelings about themselves, their teachers, and their academic progress had changed. Although all the subjects liked being in the experiment, and the tutees' reading improved, few significant differences were seen in experiment and control subjects. In the second study, fifth graders taught first graders symmetry concepts in math twice a week for six weeks. Again, others befriended the first graders and others were not placed in a pair. Tutees in this situation learned a good deal and developed more positive perceptions of their intellectual performance. First graders who had a friend enjoyed the relationship, but their self-perceptions did not change as a consequence. It was speculated that this was because being in a friend relationship was not enough of a new, concrete role to foster the changes that role theory would suggest. Tutors enjoyed the experience and learned the material they had to teach, but the experiment did not seem to affect their self-concepts very much. (CD)