Tall Buddies: Peer-Assisted Learning for Elementary Schools

Introduction and Rationale

The ability to read well contributes to virtually all other academic pursuits, and it is little wonder that a great deal of attention has been paid to this aspect of education in recent years. In this regard, Otaiba, Fuchs, Fuchs et al. (2001) emphasize that "the problems associated with limited reading competence are serious. Students with poor reading skills have lower self-esteem, pose greater discipline problems, and are less likely to complete school than more skillful readers" (p. 15). One initiative that has been shown to be highly effective in helping young students with reading problems achieve improved ability across the board is peer-assisted learning (Otaiba et al., 2001). According to Dufrene, Duhon, Gilbertson, and Noell (2005), "Peer tutoring has been shown to increase significantly students' time spent in academic instruction and engagement and student outcomes. Additionally, peer tutoring has been used effectively to address individual needs in remedial programs for at-risk and mildly disabled students" (p. 74).

Peer-assisted learning initiatives are especially useful alternative instructional approaches because they take advantage of a relatively abundant resource — students — and place comparatively limited demands on scarcer resources such as educators. Moreover, such programs provide a framework in which students can learn cooperative work skills in addition to the academic skills being targeted (Dufrene et al., 2005). The beneficial outcomes of peer tutoring programs on students' reading performance have been previously documented (Dufrene et al., 2005). While a wide range of potential positive outcomes are possible for students engaging in peer tutoring programs, academic progress is typically the area that has received the most attention. However, besides gains in scholastic achievement, researchers have suggested that there are a number of other beneficial student outcomes that result from peer tutoring initiatives, including improved academic self-efficacy and persistence (Hartman, Mencke, Uribe, & Xu, 2001). These authors add that "tutoring also brings a social component to the learning process, given that educators now believe more effective learning takes place when there are two or more people involved" (Hartman et al., 2001, p. 22).

In reality, such learning approaches are not new. Some of the earliest research from which cooperative learning techniques were developed goes back to the early 1900s, and the foundation of peer tutoring can be traced to Andrew Bell and Joseph Lancaster in the late eighteenth century, or perhaps even earlier (Falchikov, 2001). This study provides a critical review of the relevant peer-reviewed and scholarly literature concerning peer-assisted learning in general and how these programs have been used to help young readers in particular, as well as a case study of the effectiveness of this initiative at an elementary school that provides services for at-risk sixth graders with emotional, social, or behavioral problems and first-grade struggling readers. The product of this study is a best practices guide to help educators at all levels identify which peer-assisted technique might be best suited for their individual needs, how to implement it, and how to monitor its effectiveness to ensure long-term success.

Importance of the Study

Today, many teachers are overwhelmed by the special challenges they face. Not only are there escalating numbers of students categorized as emotionally or behaviorally disordered, and escalating demands on teachers to fill non-teaching roles in children's lives, but teachers today also face an increasingly diverse set of learners in any given classroom. For example, Fuchs, Fuchs, and Saenz (2005) emphasize that "American schools of the 21st century face the challenge of educating the world's most diverse student body. This diversity is reflected in variations in achievement, socioeconomic status, cultural background, and linguistic background" (p. 231). Current estimates suggest that more than 2 million students come from non-English-speaking backgrounds, and that by the year 2020 this number would reach 6 million (Fuchs et al., 2005). There is also a pressing need to address individual differences in capacity among an increasingly diverse set of learners in the general population, with many educators turning to alternatives to whole-class instruction — alternatives that share the common feature of peer-assisted learning (Keogh & Speece, 1996).

It is this researcher's belief that helping troubled sixth-grade students feel capable, connected, and contributing members of a school will help decrease behavioral problems and increase students' self-esteem. This belief is congruent with Ma (2003), who reports that young students' sense of belonging to their school plays an important role in achieving successful academic outcomes. The principal investigator also believes that training sixth-grade students to tutor low-achieving first graders will give those first graders a chance to make accelerated growth. With the Tall Buddy program, three fundamental positive outcomes are possible for the sixth graders: (a) behavior can improve, (b) student self-esteem increases — which is necessary if students are to behave more responsibly — and (c) reading skills improve.

Beyond these contributions, another important outcome of Tall Buddy tutoring is to improve the reading skills of both Tall Buddies and Small Buddies to ensure that all students become proficient readers. First graders who have difficulty in reading quickly fall behind their classmates. First-grade teachers can predict with some confidence that students with considerable reading deficits by the end of the school year will likely have long-lasting challenges in reading throughout their school years. Indeed, as Paterson and Elliott (2006) emphasize, "As students progress from elementary school through middle school to high school, they confirm their attitude toward reading. Many high school readers who have struggled with reading along the way carry deeply entrenched negative beliefs about the reading process and, consequently, construct barriers to protect themselves against feelings of failure. These attitudes push reading achievement into a downward spiral" (p. 378).

All teachers involved should select academic measures to track students' reading levels both before Tall Buddies begins and during the tutoring program. It is also important to note that when a Tall Buddy is chosen to participate in the program, the privilege is non-revocable — their position is not held over their head or threatened to be ended due to poor behavior, incomplete homework, or unfinished assignments. It takes time to break habits that have been in place for years. This researcher believes in progress toward the desired behavior, not perfection.