Peer Tutoring and Students with Emotional or Behavioral Disorders: A Review of the Literature

Abstract

This article presents an updated research synthesis on the use of students with emotional or behavioral disorders as tutors and/or tutees. Thirty-eight studies from 1972 to 2002 were identified in which students with emotional or behavioral disorders served as tutors and/or tutees in order to teach their peers a variety of academic and social skills. Within the instructional settings, a variety of peer tutoring models and configurations were found, including cross-age tutoring, which involves older students tutoring younger students, and same-age tutoring, which involves students of the same age tutoring each other. In some studies, a reciprocal component was implemented in which students exchanged roles during the sessions so that each student served as the tutor and the tutee. Overall, results suggest that students with emotional or behavioral disorders can successfully serve as tutors and tutees in reading, writing, and math classes while this replication and expansion of previous research (Maheady, Harper, & Sacca, 1988; Maheady, Sacca, & Harper, 1988) offers promising results in social studies. In addition, recent peer-tutoring research has examined the use of explicit strategy instruction in content-area classes, moving beyond the basic skill and drill of factual information. Implications for future research and practice are discussed.

Emotional and cognitive effects of peer tutoring among secondary school mathematics students

“…Apart from the purely academic variables, peer tutoring also had a positive impact on the emotional variables. Spencer [17] carried out a review of 38 studies concluding that peer tutoring had a positive impact on the emotional and behavioural disorders of the students whether they are tutors or tutees. Byrd [18] analysed 18 empirical studies.…”

Success in the college preparatory mathematics pipeline: the role of policies and practices employed by three high school reform models

“…Recent evaluation studies of high school reforms also report on the positive influence of academic support, as part of the reform design, on student academic and behavioral outcomes (Bloom, Thompson, & Unterman, 2010;Stevens, Sporte, Stoelinga, & Bolz, 2008). Associated with improved student academic outcomes are different types of academic support including peer tutoring (Robinson, Schofield, & Steers-Wentzell, 2005;Spencer, 2006), volunteer tutoring (Ritter, Barnett, Denny, & Albin, 2009), summer and after-school programs (Lauer et al, 2006), and extended classes that serve as a "double-dose" of the subject matter (Takoko & Allensworth, 2009). …”

Reading Interventions With Behavioral and Social Skill Outcomes

“…Second, a hand search was conducted from 2011 to 2013 of the following journals that published the articles that met the criteria in the first step: Annals of Dyslexia, Behavior Disorders, Education and Treatment of Children, Exceptional Children, Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis, Journal of Emotional and Behavioral Disorders, Journal of Learning Disabilities, Learning Disability Quarterly, Preventing School Failure, Psychological Reports, Psychology in the Schools , and Remedial and Special Education . Third, reference sections of 11 relevant literature reviews were searched (Al Otaiba & Fuchs, 2002; Bruhn, Lane, & Hirsch, 2014; Cook et al, 2008; Joseph & Eveleigh, 2011; Mooney, Ryan, Uhing, Reid, & Epstein, 2005; Ryan, Reid, & Epstein, 2004; Simonsen, Fairbanks, Briesch, Myers, & Sugai, 2008; Spencer, 2006; Vannest, Temple-Harvey, & Mason, 2009; Wanzek et al, 2006; Wanzek, Wexler, Vaughn, & Ciullo, 2010). Finally, the reference sections of all the studies meeting the inclusion criteria were examined.…”