What do you think of this idea to get students to tutor one another?

When we were homeschooling, my first child was very resistant to learning to read, but I kept plugging, and eventually she learned to read in spite of herself. The next thing I knew, she taught her little brother to read, and then the next youngest.

The key word here is that suddenly she was INSPIRED by the whole idea. You won’t have effective tutors unless they are inspired.

I can’t find the reference, but I remember reading about a school that enforced cooperation between children because everyone had to wear pinafores or shirts that buttoned up the back. This meant that every child had to be helped by someone else. It’s an interesting concept.

When is this tutoring going on? What age are you targeting? Is it during school hours? I think if there is study hall time, or a study period, you can just have groups where people sign up to tutor students or to get help. Students can state or write down what subjects they excell in and the teacher can help pair kids up. Even without formal tutoring, just studying in groups can be helpful. Teaching is the best way to learn. The students who help other students will reap the benefit of reinforcing what they know.

As a student tutor, I’m not so sure about this. Tutors have a sense of “authority” on the topic and many kids will take what you say at face value. To give students incentive to tutor other than a desire to help others is dangerous, in my opinion. These kids might just want the “reward” of receiving help and will BS their way through the requirement to help others. A lot of students could end up misled.

It’s a nice thought and a novel idea. I think with some refining it could go places.

What if we reverse it? By receiving tutoring, you agree to tutor someone else in the future. Not only does this remove the “first link in the chain” problem, it undermines the concern about students in need of tutoring being bad candidates for tutoring others. If the tutoring works, after all, they will wind up in a better position to help others.

One of the best ways to learn something is to teach it to someone else. Teaching is a process that forces you to understand the underlying logic of a subject, which in turn reinforces what you already know about it. Otherwise, you won’t be able to answer the kinds of questions someone new to the topic is likely to have.

I’m part of the teaching staff for a course that is being taught both in person and online this semester, and we’re using a similar method The in person class began two months before the online version. The teaching staff will instruct the in person students, who will then go on to facilitate the online course (though the teaching staff will still run that as well). Should be an interesting experience.

@SavoirFaire , I originally thought of doing it your way. My concern was what to do about students who receive tutoring but don’t want to tutor someone else. By doing it my way, there is no need for coercion or punishment. Someone who desperately needs tutoring but who has not previously tutored can do tutoring at the same time as receiving tutoring.

As some have pointed out, you learn when you teach. Part of the idea is to establish a community of teachers and learners who see the process as mutually beneficial and to get away from the competitive atmosphere created by testing. Teaching and learning is not a zero sum game. There is not a strict division between who is doing the teaching and who is doing the learning.

Many schools have tutoring programs. I believe they have a community service requirement and this is one way to satisfy that requirement. Only those who feel capable of it do it. It seems to work.

@LostInParadise There is no system of asynchronous cooperation that does not have a free rider problem. Whenever one person must give aid before the other reaches his decision point, there is always a possibility that the second person will renege on the bargain. The same problem faces a system in which one must tutor before getting tutored: the one in need of help has no guarantee that there will be anyone capable of helping him once he upholds his part of the bargain. It makes no sense for a system that is meant to help people to aks those who are already in trouble to also bear all of the additional risk that comes with tutoring first. If something goes wrong, the one in need of tutoring fails to receive his benefit and loses time he could have been using to solve his own problem. Most schools already have working tutorial systems, however, and have little to lose from the occasional free rider. Given that the school’s interest is for all students to do well, it makes sense to ask them to bear the risk. And if we’re really worried about those who would defect from the contract, we can set up some sort of punishment for failing to give tutoring services in return for having received them (though I realize you are trying to avoid this sort of coercive measure).

Asking people to tutor at the same time as being tutored changes the situation, though only so much. It makes the cooperation system synchronous (rather than asynchronous), but it assumes that the students in question are all equally capable of tutoring something. It also assumes that there will be another student in need of tutoring in the subject that the first student is competent to teach. We would not want someone tutoring the subject in which they need help, after all. I have seen the effects of people who all do not understand a topic working in groups, and it is disastrous. Thus we would need every new student in need of tutoring to be matched with a student who is in need of tutoring in some separate subject in which the first student is competent. The likelihood of this lining up well seems rather low. So if the purpose of the tutorial system is to make sure all students do well, it makes sense to tutor them first and then call on them to return the favor should the need for their services arise.

Might this mean that some people never get called upon to tutor others? Yes. But tutoring is not an economic problem. If we are truly interested in not treating education as a zero sum game, then, we have to resist the urge to see such people as free riders. If our goal is to promote achievement while simultaneously ensuring that no one falls below a certain level, it is almost necessarily the case that some will get more than they give (at least in some areas). Whether or not we can reconcile ourselves to this fact is a function of our empathy.

@SavoirFaire , I appreciate the thought that you put into your answer. The idea of a tutoring exchange is related to (okay, I probably stole the idea, though subconsciously) the time banking movement. The idea is that people in a community get credit for the hours they invest in helping someone else and they can draw against this time to get help for themselves. Time banking faces the same problem of matching needs and available services. Since it operates with a larger population, there is probably a much smaller chance of somebody being shortchanged. Maybe a better solution would be to include tutoring within a community-wide time banking system. I am hesitant about that, because I like the idea of specifically working with knowledge exchange.

I don’t mean to be discouraging because I’m sure your intentions are good. But if my youngster came home and told me about a plan like this, I’d be up in arms.

A student’s main obligation in school is to see to his or her own learning. Good citizenship aside, I would not want my student burdened with the responsibility of anyone else’s progress. The students who are having difficulty are already overwhelmed enough. And the able students are already at risk for not getting what they need just because it’s so easy to assume they don’t need anything. They’re children, and they do. Making little teachers of them just because they’re smart seriously shortchanges them, much as turning older children into surrogate parents is apt to do.

Confusing the roles of student and teacher and giving some students unusual power is also risky.

This is without even considering the implications of using untrained aides whose command of the material might or might not be sound, as well as all the social imbalances and pressures that occur in a classroom. Even at high school age students might not be mature enough to handle a role like this with respect to one another, especially if tutoring roles crossed lines of social disparity.

I don’t even care much for group projects in the classroom, where four or five students are expected to collaborate and there is one grade for the group. Someone always takes advantage of those arrangements to get a free ride, and someone else carries a disproportionate load. But short-term collaborations might serve your aim of knowledge transfer among peers without committing anyone to unwanted dependencies.

I appreciate your opinion on this, but there are a few points I wish to make.

The program would be strictly voluntary. There is no obligation on the part of student or tutor. If a student feels that the tutoring is not adequate then the student drops the tutor. I think you underestimate the ability of students to recognize poor teaching.

The program is designed to be quid pro quo. You are entitled to get back what you put in.

The benefit is not just for those who are taught. Teaching skills are valuable and it is unusual for someone who is teaching not to learn something in the process. Teaching forces you to review material and really understand it.

The nature of teaching is going through a revolution brought on by computers and the Internet. The model of the teacher standing in front of the room and lecturing may not be entirely replaced, but more and more will be joined by materials available online and by increased collaboration opportunities. Learning works based on a community level, not with each person hoarding his individual share of it in the hope of outdoing everyone else on tests. The No Child Left Behind program, by its own standards, is a colossal flop. It is just a matter of time before it is scrapped as counterproductive.

To paraphrase someone much wiser than I: a little knowledge is a dangerous thing.

@LostInParadise Thanks for the link about time banking. I had never heard of that before. Given that you are committed to coming up with something similar for tutoring, and given that you want to work specifically with knowledge exchange, what if we modified your rejected idea of incorporating tutoring into a community-wide time banking system and restricted the expansion to the academic community? There are surely areas of knowledge relevant to a school other than the traditional academic subjects, and there are surely applications of the traditional subjects that go beyond classroom material.

A music student could provide lessons to someone interested in learning an instrument, but who is not inclined to pay a professional for lessons. A basketball player could help an intramural team improve its form. A nursing student could teach a freshman dorm about the health issues that come with living in close quarters with so many people. An English student could provide editorial services to advanced students writing a thesis. An international student could be a conversational partner for someone learning their native language. This is still knowledge exchange, though it is not tutoring in the traditional sense.