Peer+Tutoring

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 * Peer Tutoring

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Gillespie, P. & Lerner, N. (2004). //The Allyn and Bacon Guide to Peer Tutoring//. (2nd ed). New York: Pearson Longman.

This handbook is the text used for the Marquette University course Processes of Writing, taught by Paula Gillespie, the co-author of this book and the director of the university's writing center. Addressing potential college writing tutors, the text addresses topics including the purpose of a writing center, the concept of non-directive tutoring, tutoring sessions, and ESL tutoring. With its case studies and transcripts of actual tutoring sessions, this book provides excellent theoretical knowledge and practical application.

Although this book is directed to college writing tutors and directors, I think it has a lot to offer the high school setting. The inclusion of tutoring transcripts makes it very readable and engaging. Its self and peer evaluation templates can be easily modified for the secondary level. Its explanation of the non-directive approach is very helpful, and its section on working with ESL students would be especially relevant to the population at my school.

Herrman, A.W. (1989). Teaching writing with peer response groups encouraging revision. //ERIC Clearinghouse on Reading, English, and Communication Digest//. 38. Retrieved February 26, 2009, from []

This short article summarized a number of research studies from the 1980s that revealed the benefits of peer revision at the high school and college level. While some of the research showed mixed results or even negative attitudes from students who did not like having their work critiqued, the majority of the literature emphasized the great benefits of formal and informal peer revising. Herrman writes, “By implementing peer writing groups, teachers encourage students to give, seek, and react to oral feedback among themselves as they write, in addition to reacting to the teacher's traditional comments on finished papers.” Peer revising groups allow students to use the writing process for brainstorming, prewriting, and revising. Furthermore, the author’s research indicated that students who use peer-revising groups have a much stronger sense of audience and accordingly make more changes than students who do not use peer-revising groups.

Lambert, G. M.S. (1999). Helping 12th grade honors English students improve writing skills through conferencing. Unpublished master’s thesis. Nova Southeastern University. Retrieved February 27, 2009, from ERIC Database.

This action research project targeted thirteen students from a larger twelfth grade writing class who wrote at or below the tenth grade level, according to a number of assessments such as SAT. Lambert wanted to see why these students were performing below grade level and look for strategies that would help them to improve their skills. Hypothesizing that students struggled for reasons such as poor self-esteem, weak content knowledge, and a lack of reading, Lambert looked at the effect that teacher and peer conferencing would have on these writers. She used several measurements to assess student improvement, such as SAT, pretest and post-test data, teacher questionnaires, class work, interviews with students, and student attitude questionnaires (pp. 11-13). Her findings indicated that eight of the thirteen students improved their writing scores from the pre-test to the post-test (pp. 35-36). Furthermore, the attitudinal surveys of the students indicated that eleven of the thirteen students believed their own writing skills had improved as a result of the conferencing, and all thirteen students found the revising process valuable (p. 44).

In order to make sure that my own leadership project is successful, I will need to use formative and summative assessment and obtain several types of data. The findings and surveys included in this essay could help me to create instruments of my own.

Lin, Sunny S.J, Liu, Eric Z.F., & Yuan, S.M. (2002). Student attitudes toward networked peer assessment: case studies of undergraduate students and senior high school students. //International Journal of Instructional Medi//a 29, 2. Retrieved February 26, 2009, from ProQuest Database.

The authors of this article examined the effectiveness of online peer revision among college and high school students. In their review of literature, they remarked that although peer revision has been documented as a valuable tool in higher education, very little research has examined its use or value at the high school level. The purpose of the study was (a) To assess the correlation between peers’ and tutors’ marking and compare the markings between undergraduate and high school students. (b) To assess student perceptions of peer assessment and compare the different perceptions of peer assessment between undergraduate and senior high school students (Lin, Liu, & Yuan, 2002, p. 246).

The study used a random sample of fifty-seven sophomore high school students and fifty-eight undergraduate students, who participated in anonymous online peer assessment and completed surveys. Participating in two rounds of peer assessment, the students responded to eleven statements in order to gauge their satisfaction with the exercise. On a 1-5 scale, high school students indicated a 3.0 average satisfaction rating, while the undergraduates indicated a 3.26 average satisfaction rating. The latter generally responded higher to statements such as “Peer have adequate knowledge to evaluate my work” and “I have benefited from marking peers’ work” (p. 252). Despite the student self-ratings, the instructors were pleased with the networked peer assessment and found that the students’ marks or grades were often very close to the instructors’ own scoring. A comparison of the two scores showed an especially significant correlation at the high school level (r=0.63) (p. 250).

This research study was one of the very few that I found regarding peer revision at the high school level. Although the high school students surveyed were not completely satisfied with the process of peer assessment, the quantitative data revealed that the feedback and scores that the tutors gave their peers was often very close to the instructors' own scores. Any activity that allows students to obtain constructive feedback should be considered valuable. This study supports my belief that peer revision of student work at the draft stage could certainly improve the grade of the final product.

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