Psychological Effects of Peer Tutoring in Mathematics in Primary Education

Abstract

In this work, a literature review of peer tutoring studies in Elementary Education Mathematics has been carried out. This review has focused only on those studies in which psychological variables are analysed. The main objectives of this work have been to compile these studies, to analyse the influence of peer tutoring at a psychological level on the students and to identify those variables that influence the results obtained (type of tutoring, ages of the participants, duration of the sessions...). The final review is made up of 22 studies. Among the main conclusions obtained from its analysis, it should be noted that 16 of these 22 studies reported important improvements in the psychological variables analysed (73% effectiveness), which is a sign of the potential of this methodology. The psychological variable on which the greatest improvements were detected was that of self-concept (89% of studies with evident improvements). Although the conclusions obtained can give a good sample of the potential of this methodology on a psychological level, a series of limitations are provided in this work to be taken into account. These limitations must be taken into account when analysing these conclusions from a critical perspective.