The impact of peer tutoring strategies on student learning in social studies.

Abstract

This study investigated how Class Wide Peer tutoring (CWPT) impacted student knowledge and students’ ability to better relate course material to historical themes in an 8th grade social studies classroom. Located in an urban school in Western New York, the classroom was composed of 18 students, eight males and ten females. The mixed method study sought to answer the following central research questions: What effect does CWPT have on students’ academic performance in social studies measured by weekly vocabulary quizzes? What effect does CWPT have on students’ ability to link content to one another using a common theme? Is there a difference in students’ test scores when CWPT is combined with a group oriented motivator compared to a team oriented motivator? What are student’s perceptions of the effectiveness of CWPT and how do these perceptions relate to the finding of the study? Using a mixed method single baseline design, weekly quizzes were given at the end of each intervention for seven weeks. Findings demonstrated that CWPT had a positive impact on student’s content knowledge and on a student’s ability to link course content to historical themes. CWPT was also found to be positively correlated with the academic performance of the 8th grade student’s social studies measured by the weekly quizzes. Findings concluded that there was no statistically significant difference between the group oriented motivators and the team oriented motivators.. The student’s response on a Likert scale-based survey showed that the majority of students believed they were learning more because of CWPT, which is consistent with the data collected during the interventions.