Cross-age tutoring: how to promote tutees' active knowledge-building

Cross-age tutoring is characterised by status and age differences between tutors and tutees. Tutees are often inactive in this setting, because responsibility for effective learning is transferred to the more experienced tutors. This study focused on improving the outcomes of cross-age tutoring for...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Educational psychology (Dorchester-on-Thames) 2018-08, Vol.38 (7), p.915-926
Main Authors: Hänze, Martin, Müller, Marion, Berger, Roland
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Active Learning
Age
autonomy
Competence
Control Groups
Cross Age Teaching
Cross-age tutoring
Electronics
Elementary School Students
Foreign Countries
Grade 3
Grade 8
Knowledge
Personal Autonomy
primary school
secondary school
Secondary School Students
Student Behavior
Student Motivation
Students
Teacher Behavior
Teaching Methods
training
Tutor Training
Tutoring
Tutors
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Summary:Cross-age tutoring is characterised by status and age differences between tutors and tutees. Tutees are often inactive in this setting, because responsibility for effective learning is transferred to the more experienced tutors. This study focused on improving the outcomes of cross-age tutoring for tutees by providing tutors with a tutor training session that emphasised knowledge-building instead of knowledge-telling. The tutors learned to encourage tutees' autonomy, competence and active knowledge construction. In a quasi-experimental design, an experimental group of 74 tutors, who were 8th-grade secondary school students, received the tutor training in knowledge-building, and a control group of 82 tutors received no training. The students in both groups subsequently tutored 583 3rd-grade primary school students in small groups on elementary aspects of electric circuits. The tutoring process was videotaped and coded. Trained tutors showed more knowledge-building and less knowledge-telling behaviour. In the tutoring interaction with trained tutors, tutees showed more active behaviour and tutors showed more restrained behaviour. Tutees coached by trained tutors reported more experiences of autonomy, competence, and intrinsic motivation and learned more than tutees instructed by untrained tutors. The study showed that cross-age tutoring can be improved by providing tutors with training that focused on knowledge-building.
ISSN:0144-3410
1469-5820
DOI:10.1080/01443410.2018.1444734