Strategy-Based Peer Tutoring

Traditionally, teachers have used textbooks and lectures in the classroom as a cost-effective and time efficient medium for instruction. Students with learning disabilities, however, typically require instruction that is more explicit and supportive than what is provided in the regular classroom. Difficulties in providing students with learning disabilities such intensive support become amplified at the secondary school level. With this in mind, there have been changes in instructional approaches for teaching adolescents with learning disabilities that can compensate for the lack of resources available in secondary school. Using peers to teach other peers learning strategies is one such approach. This book provides an evaluation of peer tutoring at the secondary school level. It examines whether students with learning disabilities who are tutored outperform control participants on various academic measures and whether certain conditions, skills or dynamics are more conducive to academic gains than others. The book will prove that it is never too late for students to make gains in their academics and given the opportunity, most students will work hard to improve themselves.

Jason Kotsopoulos, Ph.D. in School and Clinical Child Psychology at OISE, University of Toronto. Psychoeducational Consultant at Toronto District School Board. Debra Lean, Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology from Concordia University, Montreal. Chief Psychologist at Dufferin-Peel Catholic District School Board, Mississauga, Ontario.