Peer Tutoring and Students with Emotional or Behavioral Disorders: A Review of the Literature

Abstract

This article presents an updated research synthesis on the use of students with emotional or behavioral disorders as tutors and/or tutees. Thirty-eight studies from 1972 to 2002 were identified in which students with emotional or behavioral disorders served as tutors and/or tutees in order to teach their peers a variety of academic and social skills. Within the instructional settings, a variety of peer tutoring models and configurations were found, including cross-age tutoring, which involves older students tutoring younger students, and same-age tutoring, which involves students of the same age tutoring each other. In some studies, a reciprocal component was implemented in which students exchanged roles during the sessions so that each student served as the tutor and the tutee. Overall, results suggest that students with emotional or behavioral disorders can successfully serve as tutors and tutees in reading, writing, and math classes while this replication and expansion of previous research (Maheady, Harper, & Sacca, 1988; Maheady, Sacca, & Harper, 1988) offers promising results in social studies. In addition, recent peer-tutoring research has examined the use of explicit strategy instruction in content-area classes, moving beyond the basic skill and drill of factual information. Implications for future research and practice are discussed.