CONDICIONES GENERALES PARA EL PROYECTO DE LAS ESTRUCTURAS EN HORMIGÓN 1. Sistema de precompresión

A significant number of studies have indicated that students and teachers can benefit in various ways from using peer tutoring. According to Olmscheid (1999), “The list of benefits that students receive from peer tutoring is quite extensive” (p. 3).

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The effects of these benefits can be divided into four categories: the effect on students’ attainment; the social effect; the effect on the students’ attitude to learning and the benefit to teachers of the increase in students’ engagement with learning. According to Johnson and Johnson (1994), there are five main elements leading to effective group learning, achievement, social, personal and cognitive skills such as problem solving, decision-making and planning. These are positive interdependence, individual accountability, face-to-face interaction, social skills and processing. A number of studies have indicated relationships between academic attainment and building up friendships, self-esteem and students’ attitudes (Eccles et al., 1999; Masten et al., 1995; Parker et al., 1995).

First, the studies showed that students can benefit academically from peer tutoring. According to Topping (2005), “The research evidence is clear that both peer tutoring and cooperative learning can yield significant gains in academic achievement in the targeted curriculum area” (p. 635).

Topping (2005) asserted that one such gain is a deep understanding of the curriculum content. In a study examining the performance in mathematics of two groups at elementary level, one of which employed peer tutoring in their learning while the other did not, Harris and Sherman (1973) found that “the tutored students received better grades at the end of an academic quarter than did students in a matched control group who received no tutoring” (p. 588).

In a meta-analysis of 38 studies from 1972 to 2002 on students with emotional or behavioural disorders, Spencer (2006) concluded that in all of the 38 studies, peer tutoring was shown to be an effective learning strategy. The most effective form of peer tutoring was when the students exchanged the roles of tutor and tutee repeatedly. However, it was found that the tutor students were at a greater advantage

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than the tutee students as they gained a deeper understanding of the subjects being learned when the roles were not exchanged repeatedly.

In an action study by Mesler (2009), retained third-grade students (i.e., those repeating a year) were paired with struggling peers. Both tutor and tutee students showed significant gains in their test scores at the end of the academic year, the improvement resulting from the retained students’ gaining confidence and the extra maths practice they had had.

Pigott et al. (1986) examined the effect of peer tutoring at the fifth level (aged from 10 to 12 years old), and found that peer tutoring enhanced the students’ attainment. In this study each group of four students was assigned to a separate role during an arithmetic exercise. In a similar study by Kamps et al. (1994), investigating student attainment in reading comprehension and fluency, students engaged in peer tutoring demonstrated increased understanding. Vincent (1999) asserted that “Decades of research have established that well-planned peer tutoring programs can improve student achievement and self-esteem as well as overall school climate” (P. 8).

Tymms et al. (2011) carried out a study over two years involving 129 primary schools in Scotland with students aged eight or ten. In this study students’ attainment in reading and mathematics was positively affected by the use of cross-age peer tutoring.

The second category is the social effect of using peer tutoring. There is evidence that peer tutoring can positively affect students’ social and behavioural skills and that awareness of the social situation can affect the outcomes. In a meta-analysis by Roseth et al. (2006) that comprised 148 separate studies from 11different countries, academic achievement was strongly related to interpersonal perception for middle- grade students (aged 10 to 14 years). According to Topping (2005), “Peer learning encourages personal and social development” (p. 643), while Fitz-Gibbon (1988)

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stated that students who learn through peer tutoring, whether they are tutoring or being tutored, work together and communicate effectively with each other. Peer tutoring can help to improve students’ communication skills as they have to explain ideas and concepts to each other in their own words (Topping, 2005). Students use a number of valuable communication skills when peer tutoring such as listening, explaining, questioning, summarising, speculating and hypothesising (Topping, 2005). Miller, Topping, and Thurston (2010) and Topping (2005) are among a number of psychologists who discussed the increase in students’ self-esteem attributed to peer tutoring. Ginsburg-Block et al. (2006) also found, in a meta- analysis of 36 studies of peer learning in elementary schools, that there was positive correlation between social and self-perceptive outcomes and academic outcomes (Pearson’s r=0.50, n=20, p<0.01). In a study involving nine- to twelve-year-olds in 24 Scottish primary schools, Tolmie et al. (2010) demonstrated an increase in the marks achieved in both cognitive science tests and social relationships when collaborative learning was used, while a study of 5th and 6th grade students (aged 10 to 12) in schools in the American mid-west identified an increase in both academic and social gains when cooperative learning was used in science lessons (Johnson et al., 1985). Roseth et al., (2009), in a meta-analysis study involving 17,000 students from 148 studies, not only found positive increases in students’ achievements (ES=0.46) and improved social relationships (ES=0.48) with cooperative learning as well as individual learning, but also that there were significant correlations between peer attraction and achievement outcomes. Students achieved higher scores and had better social relationships when learning cooperatively.

As Roseth et al. (2009) noted, “… positive social relationships increase promotive interaction, which increases achievement, which increases positive cathexis, which increases positive social relationships even more, and so forth” (p. 226).

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Empirical studies have suggested direct and indirect relationships between social relationship and academic achievement outcomes when peer learning methodologies were applied in the learning process (DiPerna, Volpe, Elliott, 2001; Zins, Bloodworth, Weissberg, & Walberg, 2004). Similarly, Allen et al. (2012) observed that

a limitation of the current literature in respect of social relationships on outcomes is that many studies do not establish whether good relationships are a pre-condition for achievement, a related consequence of achievement or a separate outcome than achievement (p. 4).

The third category is the effect of peer tutoring on students’ attitude towards learning. Topping (2005) observed that peer tutoring can result in students being more attracted and receptive to the subject being studied, stating that “Affective changes in attitude to school, the teacher, the subject, peers, and to the self might also be found” (p. 641).

The fourth category is the advantage of peer tutoring in increasing students’ engagement with learning, since every learner participates significantly and effectively in the learning process (Philips & Soltis, 2004). In general, the educator’s role is to assist the class during discourse, and arrange the learning environment (Brophy, 2002).

According to Price (2006), teachers are responsible for creating a suitable classroom environment for creative lessons. Furthermore, large numbers of studies support the idea that peer tutoring helps students to engage more with learning and teachers to build an active learning environment that, in its turn, helps students so to engage. As Olmscheid (1999) concluded, “By utilizing peer tutoring in the classroom, teachers will ideally be able to teach more effectively” (p. 5).

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Greenwood (1991) and Olmscheid (1999) also found that peer tutoring can help students to increase their engagement in the classroom academically. “Peer tutoring gives teachers the opportunity to maximize their instructional influence on the classroom as well as to provide individualized instruction” (Kourea, Cartledge, Musti-Rao, 2007, p. 106).

Rosewal et al. (1995) conducted a study comparing the changes of self-concept with the student’s probability of dropping out of school. The students participating in the study were divided into two groups, only one of which was in a peer tutoring programme. A significant increase in self-concept and general attitude towards school was noted for the students participating in a peer tutoring programme compared to those being taught by more traditional methods.

Walker (2007) concluded that students who had participated in a peer tutoring programme or cooperative learning forms had a higher self-concept and greater satisfaction than students involved in more traditional forms of individual and isolated learning.

A two-year Randomized Control Trial (RCT) undertaken by Topping et al. (2011), involving 86 co-educational and mixed-ability Scottish primary schools of average socioeconomic status, suggested a significant gain in mathematical achievement for cross age tutoring over both years. In the same study, other differences were not significant. The study also found, through micro-evaluation, an improvement in selected schools in Year 1. However, there was significant progress in both Year 2 mathematics-only groups and for less able students, from randomly selected schools. In a meta-analysis of RCTs on the educational outcomes of tutoring by Cohen, Kulik & Kulik (1982), the average effect size (ES) in the 52 studies was 0.40 and the standard error of ES was 0.069. In addition, the average ES of the students’ attitude towards subject matter was 0.29 with the standard error of 0.08. It was also found

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that the tutoring programs affect positively the tutored students' attitudes to the subject being taught. Moreover, the average ES of achievement in 38 studies was 0.33 and the standard error was 0.09, while the average ES of the attitude to the subject being taught was 0.42 with a standard error of 0.46.

In a meta-analysis of RCTs on peer tutoring by Cook et al. (1986), 19 studies yielded 74 ESs and, in common with many other studies, the study indicated that the peer tutoring programmes in general positively affect students, with the tutees gaining more than the tutors. The improvement ratings for both tutor and tutee on self- concept and sociometry were smaller than those for attitude.

2.3.3.2 Justification for choice of same-age peer tutoring rather than cross-age