The Efficacy of a Balanced Literacy Intervention Including Peer Tutoring Among Underperforming Students from Poor and Minority Backgrounds

Abstract

This dissertation investigated the effects of the cross age peer tutoring relationship when students in both the tutor and tutee roles were underachieving. The targeted population consisted of students who attended a charter school in the southwestern United States. Two studies were conducted: one in science and one in reading. Primarily, the goal was to investigate a model of cross-age peer tutoring that would benefit underachieving students in the content area of reading. Students who are underachieving in reading often struggle in other content areas as well, so finding a way to increase reading achievement in at-risk schools that lack funding and resources is of utmost importance to a child’s overall education. The first study, in the content area of science, was aimed at understanding if underachieving students could be placed in tutor roles to close gaps in their achievement. Sixteen middle school students (14 boys and two girls) in a mixed grade class (sixth through eighth) were trained to deliver a science curriculum to elementary students. The overall findings in this first study suggest that the tutors demonstrated significant gains in knowledge acquisition after having the opportunity to teach the material to the younger students. Findings also suggest that the act of teaching had a positive impact on the tutors’ attitudes towards learning about water conservation and in their valuing of water conservation. The second, larger study, in the content area of reading, paired underachieving middle school students with underachieving elementary students for a shared reading experience in which the middle schools students acted as tutors and were trained to focus on specific parts of the reading process to help the elementary students increase their reading achievement. This study consisted of 64 tutors (27 seventh graders and 37 eighth graders) and 77 tutees (26 Kindergarteners, 16 first graders, 12 second graders, and 23 third graders). The overall findings in this study demonstrate significant gains in reading for both the tutors and tutees. Although the investigations in this dissertation were limited in terms of sample size and lacked control groups, the results suggest that overall, cross-age tutoring is a way to help at-risk students become more engaged in their own educations and provide resource-challenged schools with a viable resource within their own walls.