Peer teaching, peer learning

Peer teaching is not a new concept. It can be traced back to Aristotle’s use of archons, or student leaders, and to the letters of Seneca the Younger. It was first organized as a theory by Scotsman Andrew Bell in 1795, and later implemented into French and English schools in the 19th century. Over the past 30-40 years, peer teaching has become increasingly popular in conjunction with mixed ability grouping in K-12 public schools and an interest in more financially efficient methods of teaching.

Not to be confused with peer instruction—a relatively new concept designed by Harvard professor Eric Mazur in the early 1990s— peer teaching is a method by which one student instructs another student in material on which the first is an expert and the second is a novice.

Goodlad and Hurst (1989) and Topping (1998) note that academic peer tutoring at the college level takes many different forms

Peer education

What is peer education?

Peer education is a term widely used to describe a range of initiatives where young people from a similar age group, background, culture and/or social status educate and inform each other about a wide variety of issues.

Rationale

The rationale behind peer education is that peers can be a trusted and credible source of information. They share similar experiences and social norms and are therefore better placed to provide relevant, meaningful, explicit and honest information.

Defining peer education

The following definition takes the key elements of peer education into account:

'Peer education is an approach which empowers young people to work with other young people, and which draws on the positive strength of the peer group. By means of appropriate training and support, the young people become active players in the educational process rather than passive recipients of a set message. Central to this work is the collaboration between young people and adults.'

Fast Forward, national voluntary organisation promoting health and wellbeing

Peer education in school

Peer education is an increasingly popular method of providing information and advice to young people in both school and community-based settings. Well-considered peer education initiatives can offer a wide range of benefits to pupils, peer educators, teachers and the school as a whole.

Using a peer education model to deliver information and education to young people can ensure that the adult partner (for example, a teacher or school nurse), peer educator and peer educatee take an equal role in informing, shaping and passing on information.

Benefits of peer education

The benefits for peer educators are widely recognised and can include positive changes in terms of knowledge, skills, attitudes and confidence. Peer education has a strong emphasis on personal development and can be particularly effective in allowing low achieving pupils to fully participate and succeed in a wider range of educational and health promoting activities.

Peer educatees can benefit from credible, up-to-date, relevant and fun inputs delivered by fellow pupils with whom they can identify and build positive relationships with.

As part of a whole school approach, peer education initiatives can play a major role in helping schools foster positive relationships between pupils and teachers. They can help schools to create a caring and safe environment that promotes the health of all its members.

The main benefits of peer teaching include, but are not limited to, the following:

• Students receive more time for individualized learning.
• Direct interaction between students promotes active learning.
• Peer teachers reinforce their own learning by instructing others.
• Students feel more comfortable and open when interacting with a peer.
• Peers and students share a similar discourse, allowing for greater understanding.
• Peer teaching is a financially efficient alternative to hiring more staff members.
• Teachers receive more time to focus on the next lesson.

Research also indicates that peer learning activities typically yield the following results for both tutor and tutee: team-building spirit and more supportive relationships; greater psychological well-being, social competence, communication skills and self-esteem; and higher achievement and greater productivity in terms of enhanced learning outcomes.