High‐Performing Inner‐City Adolescents Assist Low‐Performing Peers in Counseling Groups

Abstract

Operating from the theoretical base that the adolescent social system and group procedures could be incorporated into strategies for improving the school performance of disadvantaged students, a supervised program of peer leadership in counseling and study groups was developed for a group of inner‐city high school students. A method of training students to be peer leaders in the groups was developed, and the effects of the program on the academic performance of the selected students were evaluated. In the demonstration program, the example of achieving peers and the support and reinforcement of a group with similar goals provided the impetus for inner‐city high school juniors to develop better classroom skills, higher grades, and higher levels of vocational and educational aspirations and expectations.

Effectiveness of peer-led media education program for drug prevention among students

“…Underlying this is a concept that peer influence may be stronger than that of adults such as teachers or "experts." Peerled education has been used extensively to meet a variety of educational objectives, such as tutoring of reading [21], and peers have been used in a wide variety of health-related initiatives [22][23][24]. Peer-led education has used successfully in presenting lectures/lessons, drama productions, supporting resource centers, operating hot-lines, and one-to-one counseling [21].…”

Counselor Interventions with Low‐Achieving and Underachieving Elementary, Middle, and High School Students: A Review of the Literature

“…In a study involving 96 underachieving 11th graders, Vriend (1969) trained students to serve as peer leaders in a daily program of group counseling, study groups, and group guidance. Experimental students improved significantly more on GPA than did control students during the two semesters of the program.…”

Effects of a Classroom Guidance Unit on Sixth Graders' Examination Performance

“…I designed the unit to include the dimensions of successful treatment programs described above: (a) a combination of study skills training and counseling support, (b) a structured or leader-directed format, and (c) a group setting. Because researchers had suggested in previous investigations that peer group influence can be a powerful tool in positively affecting achievement (Anderson, 1976;Vriend, 1969), a group-centered rather than a lecture approach was used in the classroom to achieve maximum peer interaction.…”