Students with Emotional and Behavioral Disorders as Peer Tutors: A Valued Role

Abstract

R ob is a sixth grade student in Ms. Decker's self-contained classroom for students with emotional and behavioral disorders (EBD). He has struggled in school, both academically and behaviorally, for as long as his family can remember. He was retained in kindergarten and first grade, and has failed to meet benchmarks on the annual state standardized test. Rob also engages in many escapemotivated behaviors. For instance, he flipped over his desk and punched a wall as others completed a benchmark reading test last month, and said, ''I will fail anyway no matter what, so why even try?'' Ms. Decker has noticed that Rob works very hard on nonacademic activities that interest him. Recently, Rob developed a passion for magic. He watched a series of magic videos on YouTube over and over, practiced the trick several times a day, and expressed great pride when he was able to show this trick to his classmates. The energy and effort that he poured into his magic trick showed Ms. Decker that he is motivated to learn new things, and to display this knowledge before others. She wonders how she can harness this motivation in a positive and proactive way to support his academic and behavioral needs. Although Rob clearly has challenges, Ms. Decker could positively and proactively harness his motivation and better meet his academic and behavioral needs by placing him in a position of responsibility as a peer tutor. The concept of this idea may seem like a frightening prospect at first. Indeed, teachers may be hesitant to consider students with academic challenges as potential tutors (Cochran, Feng, Cartledge, & Hamilton, 1993), particularly students with EBD who often have challenging behaviors and poor interpersonal relationships in addition to their own academic needs (Landrum, Tankersley, & Kauffman, 2003; Trout, Nordness, Pierce, & Epstein, 2003). However, existing research has demonstrated that, with careful planning and support, many students with EBD can effectively tutor other students (Blake, Wang, Cartledge, & Gardner, 2000; Tournaki & Criscitiello, 2003). This article will provide theoretical and empirical support for placing students with EBD in tutoring positions and make recommendations for implementing peer tutoring programs with students like Rob.

Teachers’ attitudes towards inclusion and their self‐efficacy for inclusive practices as predictors of willingness to implement peer tutoring

“…Specifically, following implementation in their classrooms, teachers felt that peer tutoring was a viable and effective instructional strategy that addresses not only the needs of students with learning difficulties but also helps in preserving a quality learning experience for typically developing students (Dufrene, Noell, Gilbertson, et al, ). Moreover, teachers in the study of Wang, Bettini and Cheyney () reported that peer tutoring proved particularly helpful in enhancing the social skills of students with emotional behavioural disorders. Similar positive experiences were detected in the study conducted by Jones (), in which school staff were found to be very positive towards peer tutoring mentioning various benefits for the participated students with autism.…”

Improving Reading Fluency Skills for Secondary Students with Emotional and Behavioral Disorders

“…When establishing peers as models, it is important to directly teach the expected behaviors for both roles. That means stating the importance of performing each role, modeling the behaviors, providing corrective feedback when appropriate, reinforcing correct performance of the behaviors, and reteach role behaviors as necessary (Wang, Bettini, & Cheyney, 2014).…”

Η Διδασκαλία Ομηλίκων Ως Μέσο Εφαρμογής Της Ένταξης Παιδιών Με Ειδικές Εκπαιδευτικές Ανάγκες

“…Accordingly, disability specific information, like managing disruptive behaviour or provide physical assistance, should be offered to tutors during training (Bond & Castagnera, 2006;Lieberman, Dunn, Van der Mars, & McCubbin, 2000;Temple & Lynnes, 2008). As a conclusion, all authors argued that students should be able to follow and complete successfully all the procedures, before peer tutoring starts in their classrooms (Dufrene et al, 2010;Mackiewicz et al, 2011;Wang, Bettini, & Cheyney, 2013).…”

“…In order to accomplish the aims of inclusion, various educational methods have been used through these years. One evidencebased intervention for providing supplemental instruction to students at risk or with SEND in mainstream classrooms is peer tutoring (Scruggs, Mastropieri, & Marshak, 2012;Wang, Bettini, & Cheyney, 2013;Wood, Mustian, & Lo, 2013). Klavina and Block (2013) suggested that peer tutoring can be used in mainstream classrooms to help students with SEND develop both their academic and social skills, along with the essential daily skills needed in their school routine.…”

“…Usually in the literature the ones responsible for students' training are the teachers (De Backer, Van Keer, & Valcke, 2014;Maheady & Gard, 2010;Mastropieri, Scruggs, & Berkeley, 2007;Wang, Bettini, & Cheyney, 2013). However, there are cases, such as in the studies of Dufrene et al (2010), Lingo (2014), Mackiewicz et al (2011), McDuffie, Mastropieri, andScruggs (2009), and Wood, Mustian, and Lo (2013) in which students' training was conducted by one of the researchers, and not the teacher.…”