The purpose of this study was to examine the effect of peer teaching on the mathematics achievement, problem-solving skills and meta- cognition of high-performing math peer tutors.
Three research questions were posed:
1. What impact does peer teachi...
The purpose of this study was to examine the effect of peer teaching on the mathematics achievement, problem-solving skills and meta- cognition of high-performing math peer tutors.
Three research questions were posed:
1. What impact does peer teaching have on the mathematics achievement of high-performing math peer tutors?
2. What impact does peer teaching have on the problem-solving skills of high-performing math peer tutors?
3. What impact does peer teaching have on the metacognition of high-performing math peer tutors?
The subjects in this study were students in two selected classes in D elementary school located in Seoul. One of the classes was taught by this researcher and selected as an experimental group, and the other that was selected as a control group was most equivalent to the former. Peer teaching was applied to the experimental group in math class, and the control group took just typical math lessons. Approximately 17 students who ranked in the upper 50 percent served as peer tutors, and the others who ranked in the lower 50 percent and numbered about 17 were selected as peer learners.
To find out the impact of peer teaching on the math achievement, problem-solving skills and metacognition of the peer tutors, an inventory was prepared, and a SPSS 12.0KO for Windows program was employed to make a t-test to look for any possible gaps before and after the experiment.
And a case study was implemented by utilizing a questionnaire method to check into the view of the peer tutors and their awareness and understanding of peer teaching strategies.
The findings of the study were as follows:
First, peer teaching made a statistically significant difference to the math achievement of the math high achievers who served as peer tutors at the 5% level of significance.
Second, peer teaching made a statistically significant difference to the problem-solving skills of the math high achievers who served as peer tutors at the 5% level of significance.
Third, peer teaching made no statistically significant difference to the metacognition of the math high achievers who served as peer tutors at the 5% level of significance.
As a result of conducting a survey to grasp the view of the peer tutors and their understanding of peer teaching strategies, the following findings were given;
First, the peer tutors thought that peer teaching referred to one-on-one teaching provided by peer tutors to peer learners about what the latter didn't understand.
Second, the children who acted as peer tutors put a lot of efforts into coming up with diverse teaching methods to make it easier to teach their peers.
Third, the children who served as peer tutors showed an improvement in problem-solving attitude.
Fourth, all the children who acted as peer tutors believed that peer teaching had an effect on boosting the academic standing of both peer tutors and learners, and they felt they made lots of progress in problem- solving skills.
Based on the findings of the study, the following conclusion was reached:
First, peer teaching is more effective at improving the math achievement of high-performing math peer tutors, compared to the effect of typical instruction on math high achievers.
Second, peer teaching is more effective at fostering the problem- solving skills of high-performing math peer tutors, compared to the effect of typical instruction on math high achievers.
Third, peer teaching is more effective at boosting the metacognition of high-performing math peer tutors to some extent, compared to the effect of typical instruction on math high achievers.
The above-mentioned findings of the study suggested that peer teaching is one of methods to be of use for the math achievement, problem-solving skills and metacognition of math high achievers who serve as peer tutors.