The purpose of this study was to implement peer tutoring strategies to teach students with reading comprehension learning disabilities(RCLD) who experience learning and emotional problems due to their learning disabilities. This study examined the eff...
The purpose of this study was to implement peer tutoring strategies to teach students with reading comprehension learning disabilities(RCLD) who experience learning and emotional problems due to their learning disabilities. This study examined the effects of the peer tutoring strategies on reading comprehension and self-concept of tutees and tutors, and analyzed and compared differences in the four peer tutoring strategies. The four peer tutoring strategies implementedin this study were (1) regular same-age peer tutoring(RS), (2) regular cross-age peer tutoring(RC), (3) reading comprehension learning disabilities same-age peer tutoring(LS), (4) reading comprehension learning disabilities cross-age peer tutoring(LC). By comparing and analyzing the effects in implementing the peer tutoring strategies, this study attempted to examine the effective strategies that contributed to improving tutee's reading comprehension and self-cocept, This study also examined the effects on the reading comprehension and self-concept for those students with RCLD who participated as tutors.
The subjects of the study were recruited from ten elementary schools in the Pusan metropolitan city in Korea. The tutees were 40 students with RCLD recruited from the fourth grade, and the tutors were 10 fouth graders from regular classes, 10 fouth graders with RCLD, 10 sixth graders from regular classes, and 10 sixth graders with RCLD
After having five pre-training sessions run by special education teachers(special education teacher whose students participated in the study), the tutors ran their peer tutoring sessions with the tutees. Peer tutoring sessions were conducted for 30 minutes for each session four times a week, totaling to twenty sessions for five weeks. The content of the peer tutoring training program to improve reading comprehension was adapted from Korea language textbooks for tourth graders with elaboration strategies.
The results of intervention are as follow: First, the different peer tutoring strategies showed differences in improvement in the tutees' reading comprehension. The cross-age peer tutoring was more effective than the same-age peer tutoring in reading comprehension. Also the regular peer tutoring showed more improvement in reading comprehension than the peer tutoring by the students with RCLD. Therefore it is desirable to place academically advanced and older students for peer tutoring to promote cognitive improvement of tutees.
Secondly, there were no differences among the peer tutoring strategies in terms of improvement of self-concept of the tutees. This suggests that ability and age of tutors may not be that important in tutee' definitional improvement. However, compared to the performance on pre-test, each group showed improvement in self-concept in the post-test. Therefore the peer tutoring had a positive impact on definitional improvement of the tutees.
Thirdly, the application of peer tutoring contributed significantly to improvement of reading comprehesion of the students who participated as tutors. This implies that the students with RCLD who participated as totors showed significant cognitive improvement through the experiences as the tutors im implementing the peer tutoring strategies.
Fourthly, the implementation of the peer tutoring strategies showed significant effects in improvement in self-concept for those with RCLD who participated as tutors. This implies that the students with RCLD who participated as tutors in implementation of the peer tutoring strategies made emotional improvement through the experiences as tutors.
In summary, the peer tutoring for students with RCLD was an effective strategy for both tutors and tutees in terms of making cognitive and emotional improvement, In particular, to make the peer tutoring effective for tutees' cognitive improvement, age and ability of tutors need to be considered.