Peer-Assisted Learning

Peer-assisted learning can be defined as the acquisition of knowledge and skill through active helping and supporting among status equals or matched companions. It involves people from similar social groupings who are not professional teachers helping each other to learn and learning themselves by so doing.

Where much older helpers work with much younger learners, the differential in levels of ability and interest can be understimulating for the helpers, who are unlikely to gain cognitively. The peer helping interaction is different from that between a professional teacher and a child or young person, and it has different advantages and disadvantages. Consequently, there has been more interest in deploying helpers whose capabilities are nearer to those of the helped. The helper is intended to be “learning by teaching” and also be a more proximate and credible model.

In this entry, peer learning is defined, and a typology and effects are considered. The longest established and most intensively researched forms of peer learning are peer tutoring and cooperative learning.

Peer tutoring (PT) is characterized by specific role taking as tutor or tutee, with high focus on curriculum content and usually also on clear procedures for interaction, in which participants receive generic and/or specific training. Some peer tutoring methods scaffold the interaction with structured materials, whereas others prescribe structured interactive behaviors that can be effectively applied to any materials of interest.

Cooperative learning (CL) has been described as “structuring positive interdependence” in pursuit of a specific shared goal or output. This is likely to involve the specification of goals, tasks, resources, roles, and rewards by the teacher, who facilitates or more firmly guides the interactive process. Typically operated in small groups of about six heterogeneous learners, CL requires previous training to ensure equal participation and simultaneous interaction, synergy, and added value.

One of the most important changes over time has been a greater focus on implementation integrity. This has involved sharpening awareness of the organizational variables in the delivery of peer learning, such as the following:

• Curriculum content—knowledge or skills or combination to be covered.
• Contact constellation—the size of group can vary from 2 to 30 or more. More intensive is PL in pairs.
• Within or between institutions—although most PL takes place within the same institution, it can also take place between different institutions.
• Year of study—helpers and helped may be from the same or different years of study and/or be the same or different ages.
• Ability—although many projects operate crossability (even if they are same-age/year), there is increasing interest in same-ability.
• Role continuity—especially in same-ability projects, structured switching of roles at strategic moments (reciprocal PL) can have the advantage of involving greater novelty and a wider boost to self-esteem.
• Time—in regular class contact time, outside of this, or in a combination of both, depending on the extent to which it is substitutional or supplementary for regular teaching.
• Helper characteristics—if helpers are those who are merely average (or even less), all partners should find some challenge in their joint activities. Although the gain of the helped might not be so great, the aggregate gain of both combined may be greater.
• Characteristics of the helped—projects may be for all or a targeted subgroup.
• Objectives—projects may target intellectual (cognitive) gains, formal academic achievement, affective and attitudinal gains, social and emotional gains, self-image and self-concept gains, or any combination.
• Voluntary or compulsory—some projects require participation, whereas in others, helpers select the participants.
• Reinforcement—some projects involve extrinsic reinforcement for the helpers (and sometimes also the helped), whereas others rely on intrinsic motivation.

The following aspects of organization need to be considered: context, objectives, curriculum area, participants, helping technique, contact, materials, training, process monitoring, assessment of students, and evaluation and feedback.

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