The impact of interdependent cross-age peer tutoring on social and mathematics self- concepts

Abstract

Abstract: This paper adds to the limited body of literature and concentrates on investigating the impact of a new peer tutoring framework, ‘Interdependent Cross Age-Peer Tutoring’ (ICAT), on the socio-academic process of learning of self-concepts. ICAT is informed by Social Interdependence Theory, a socio-psychological perspective which aims to make cross-age peer tutoring more cooperative. The intervention took place in 2013 with three schools in England: Two of the schools adopted a pre-post-test quasi experimental design and one school (school C) adopted a single group design. In school A Year 8 students tutored Year 6 (n=201), in school B Year 9 students tutored Year 7 (n=115), and in school C Year 10 students tutored Year 8 (n=102). ICAT was applied once a week for a period of 35-40 minutes across six weeks, covering school-planned mathematic topics. For school A, which implemented ICAT according to programme specifications, some positive and significant effect sizes were observed.