A Review of Peer Tutoring Interventions and Social Interdependence Characteristics

Abstract

Peer tutoring is a form of peer learning proven to be an effective educational intervention in terms of improving students’ performance, social and academic attitudes, behaviour and language. Social Interdependence Theory provides a broad framework for understanding peer learning effectiveness. Although the framework has been widely applied in groups of three or more students, it is unclear to what extent the framework has been applied in a peer tutoring context. Consequently, it is not known whether peer tutoring interventions are making use of social interdependence elements shown to yield high effect sizes. The research objectives for this paper are therefore to: I) explore the extent to which peer tutoring interventions have taken a social interdependence perspective while implemented, II) identify the academic subjects with most social interdependence theoretical elements and III) explore the most/least frequent social interdependence elements applied to peer tutoring. Eleven established social interdependence ideas/elements were identified and used to scan 127 articles with 252 peer tutoring interventions. The aim is for the findings to contribute to the improvement of peer tutoring interventions for teachers and academics by identifying opportunities for more work.