09.25.06
Merrett, F. and Mottram, S. (1997) Do boys or girls make better reading tutors? An empirical study to examine children’s effectiveness as tutors using the pause, prompt and praise procedures.
Merrett, F. and Mottram, S. (1997) Do boys or girls make better reading tutors? An empirical study to examine children’s effectiveness as tutors using the pause, prompt and praise procedures. Educational Psychology 17(4):419-433.
This study looked at peer tutoring using the “pause, prompt, and praise” procedures. This is presented as an alternative to putting poorer readers in a separate class or giving them separate instruction from the teacher. Reading level was measured before and after tutoring to determine if tutoring had any effect. There were 24 tutor-tutee pairings. The sex of the tutor and the sex of the tutee were also examined to determine if one sex was a more effective tutor, better tutee, or whether there was some kind of interaction between tutor and tutee sex. Previous studies suggested that same sex tutoring would be most effective because members of the same sex are more likely to open up to one another. All tutees except 2 improved reading skills over the course of the study but those that studied with a tutor that was of their preferred sex (students were asked whom them preferred to learn from) improved more than those that didn’t have a tutor of their preferred sex. There was no significant effect of same-sex or different-sex tutoring nor was either sex a better tutor or tutee.
A couple factors collided to create my interest in this article. First, I was a tutor in high school and college (though mostly math and science) and the hardest thing was to find the best way to help a student. Reading was something that I was never particularly good at tutoring possibly because I didn’t really understand where my students were coming from. Also, recent popular news articles have been talking about the small budget allotments for special education and this is an approach that might help that situation. Studies have shown (though I don’t remember which ones) that sometimes peers are better at teaching some things because they remember how they learned it whereas an expert just knows the information and doesn’t have as good a handle on what might be problematic for a new learner and why.
