PEER TUTORING: BREAKING THE BARRIERS TO LEARNING AND STUDENTS PARTICIPATION

The heterogeneous nature of students is a fact (just like the heterogeneous nature of society), and this must be seen as an opportunity for maximising teaching-learning processes and as a challenge; a chance to learn with and from human differences. This fact, which characterises all people, must be recognised and the best possible educational response found in schools. In the last decade, the movement towards inclusive education and intercultural education has been the working framework facilitating the positive evaluation of diversity, considered as a system of values and beliefs and a key, indispensable element in improvement processes. Inclusive schools have reorganised their classrooms to take into account a series of methodological, strategic and organisational changes and aspects necessary so that they can attend to all students and make learning more effective. The classroom becomes an inclusive social and teaching space that reflects the culture, values and targets of the school. To become inclusive, it requires a new type of organisation, which does not mean that the same organisation is reproduced in all classrooms. In fact, the classroom needs to be adapted with a view to more learning and greater participation by all pupils.
One of the methodologies making use of the differences between students and establishing cooperative interactions between students – as they are interested both in their own work and in that of their classmates – is peer tutoring. This strategy is based on the creation of pairs, with an asymmetrical relationship, deriving from the tasks of the respective roles – tutor and tutee – where both students have a common, shared objective, which is the acquisition or improvement of a competence from the curriculum, acquired through interaction planned by teachers.
In this article, we present an research in peer tutoring developed in primary education and based on the Catalan programme Llegim en parella (Let’s read in pairs) (Durán, 2009). Twice a week the students work on the Catalan language through the support and help of a peer. The approach begins with the training of students and, through the allocation of the roles – tutor and tutored – they share in learning. The results show great satisfaction on the part of all participants and improvements in academic performance and in pro-social behaviour.