Abstract:

In accord with a shift in the conceptualization of learning from a focus on recall of knowledge to the transformative (co)-construction of meaning and development of understanding, many universities now offer their students a range of peer support activities, such as peer mentoring, peer learning or peer tutoring. Recent research (Brandt & Dimmitt, 2015) investigated the provision of peer tutoring in a Writing Center established to support engineering students for whom English is an Additional Language (EAL). It was found that while peer tutors were expected in their tutoring to reflect understandings of learning as socially constructed, in practice they were more likely to adopt a traditional directive approach, dominated by telling, explaining, demonstrating and directing. This may be explained both by tutors’ formative experience at school, identified in the research as having been significantly dependent on rote learning, and by the institution’s formalized design of peer tutoring which mirrors a traditional educational context in several respects, such as in the advertising, selection, appointment, training, payment and, to some extent, evaluation of peer tutors who are academically more advanced than those they are expected to tutor. While this formalization responds to an institutional need for quality assurance, consistency in service provision and effective utilization of resources, meeting this need may present particular challenges for those seeking to design academic learning support involving peer tutors and reflecting understandings of learning as co-constructed and transformative. Addressing this, those involved in providing learning support at universities can complement and merge formal peer tutoring with informal interdependent peer learning, establishing a culture characterized less by dyads, with a peer tutor and a consulting student in a potentially uneven relationship, and more by trios consisting of a peer tutor and student learning partners. Learning partnerships may be established systematically between students of the same class or cohort and may be characterized by reciprocity, parity, some commonality and shared experiences. Their presence in consultations can serve to dilute and deflect directive tendencies on the part of tutors, leading to consultations more likely to involve sharing of knowledge, ideas and experience among interdependent participants. Discussion of the benefits in integrating peer tutoring and interdependent learning for EAL university students, in particular, with recommendations for implementation, conclude this paper.

Keywords:

Peer tutoring, interdependent learning, learning support, Writing Centers.