The Development Of Peer Tutoring

Peer tutoring is not new to the world of education. Having students help their fellow students learn the lessons was a serendipitous innovation developed by Mr Andrew Bell of England in the late 18th and early 19th centuries.

Andrew Bell primarily wanted to save money by using trays of sand as writing materials at the Military Male Asylum in Egmore. To make sure the sand trays were being used, Bell used some students as monitors, which were children who taught other students using the sand trays.

Later, Bell realized the use of having students teach other students in class has its benefits. The students were segregated into two types of classes: the well performing students and those who were struggling with their lessons. The achievers were utilized as peer tutors to their under-performing fellow students.

On one hand, the teachers and their teaching assistants worked in “helping children, monitoring the tutors and quizzing students to make sure the teaching system was working,” as described by Brendan Dabkowski in his paper, The History Of Peer Tutoring. This systemic approach to tutoring was adopted and later expanded by Joseph Lancaster in his school.

Lancaster’s peer tutors were provided with detailed teaching materials and answer keys for testing students with their knowledge of the lessons. All these was done while the teacher was focused in one group of boys in a class of hundreds.

William Fowle, another educator who embraced this system, conducted studies on peer tutoring and found that the children were able to teach their fellow students more effectively than adults could.

The ideas of these men spread to the United States, where few teachers worked. The educational system was still developing and financial support was hard to come by. The teachers relied on the better students to tutor their peers.

Source: Dabkowski, Brendan. The History Of Peer Tutoring. http://wrt-intertext.syr.edu/VIII/dabkowski.html. 2000