Peer tutoring and Cooperative learning

We can define peer tutoring as:

“Una strategia in cui i soggetti dotati di notevole influenza normativa nei confronti del loro gruppo di appartenenza si assumono la responsabilità, tramite un opportuno processo di formazione e di training, di esercitare specifiche funzioni di influenza normative. (Pellai, Rinaldin, Tamburini 2002:41)”

So, it is a didactic methodology in which the subject with more abilities and competences becomes the tutor – the guide, the helper- of their peer, who has more difficulties. The tutor has the big responsibility of accompanying their fellow student to success by following the directions of the teacher. On the other hand, the tutee must trust their tutor and feel comfortable with them. The moral and educative aim of this method is soon visible: a balanced interaction of the two is essential to achieving a good result. As consequence, the climate in class, the environment, and the students' social relational skills are also valorized if these techniques work. The importance of tutoring is more marked in multicultural contexts, where the risk of social contrasts is generally higher. We believe that in the illiterate, adult CAD, because of its peculiar characteristics, the risk is even higher.

39 _{Some materials have been proposed at the mastercalss of 29/11/2015 in CAD, by Giulia Bortolon and}

Annalisa Brichele . It concerns a didactic unit on “the town” for an illiterate class. They stratify the tasks considering all illiterate levels.

66

The advantages of peer tutoring are multiple, both for the tutor (the one who helps) and the tutee (the one who is helped). First of all, it develops cognitive and meta-cognitive strategies, as the tutor needs to re-use and re-interpret their knowledge in order to facilitate the comprehension of the other. Secondly, it promotes the sense of competence of each one, the personal trust between them and it increases their self-esteem. Finally, it requires the activation of many types of intelligences since it does not only require linguistic competences, but also personal and emotional ones. During tutoring, contrary to what one might think, the communication is not mono-directional but bidirectional because there is a continuous influence of both parties in the interaction. The communication of the two, to be efficient, must be the result of the negotiation of the knowledge according to the feedback received (Caon 2006).

Strictly related to peer tutoring we find cooperative learning. While the first refers to the collaboration of two people, the latter refers to the cooperation of a group of people. There are many studies that have researched cooperative learning, as its efficacy has been proven to have a high percentage of success. We give a simple definition taken from Rutka, which defines it according to the principles of Social Mediation (2006:174): “The cooperative learning is a method of learning and acquiring in which the significant variant is the cooperation among students.”

The elements at the basis of cooperative learning are:

· Positive interdependence: the most important characteristic of cooperative learning, because its presence is necessary for the activity success. Its importance has been studied by many authors, among which Ellerani – Pavan (2003) and Johnson (1997)40_{. In this session we limit ourselves to the definition and explanation given by}

Johnson:

“L’interdipendenza positiva è da considerarsi raggiunta quando i membri del gruppocomprendono che il rapporto di collaborazione che li unisce è tale per cui non può esistere successoindividuale senza il successo collettivo. Il fallimento del singolo è il fallimento del gruppo. Imembri capiscono perciò che lo sforzo di ciascuno non va soltanto a suo vantaggio, ma anche avantaggio di tutti gli altri componenti del gruppo. L’interdipendenza positiva induce gli studenti aimpegnarsi per la riuscita delle altre persone come per la propria e sta alla base dell’apprendimentocooperativo: niente interdipendenza positiva, niente cooperazione. (…)”

67

· Face to face interaction: as for peer tutoring, reciprocal knowledge and comparison is important for creating a good climate in order to work together;

· Social competences: cooperative learning helps in acquiring many competences (not only linguistic ones) such as interpersonal and communicative, leadership, problem solving, competences for the positive management of the conflict, and decision making. (Comoglio e Cardoso, 1996).

· Personal responsibility: interacting with a cooperative group helps the pupils become responsible at many levels, because they have to respond to the eventual failure of the group activity, to the deficiencies of the individual part of the activity, and to the teacher.

· Revision of the group: group processing is the way we evaluate the efficacy of the job. The students are asked to give an evaluation for themselves.

The group of cooperative learning is most often heterogeneous because its efficacy is based on the valorization of the differences. The abilities of one compensate for the lacks of another. In fact: “I gruppi che mostrano differenze interne di background di livello di capacità e di sesso sembrano idonei a stimolare le attività di elaborazione di contenuto, di memorizzazione a lungo termine di riflessione e ragionamento a promuovere l’assunzione e l’esercizio dei ruoli di tutoring e di tutee a valorizzare la ricerca di prospettive diverse che favoriscano l’approfondimento dei contenuti da apprendere. (Johnson, Johnson, Holubec, 1996 in Rutka: 2006)”.

The other aspects that make the group work efficiently are:

· The equilibrium of the levels: the members of the group are not random, they must be chosen by the teacher according to their competences. A group should be composed by an excellent student, a medium level one and a low level one.

· Small numbers: the groups should not be formed by more than five people, otherwise the interaction could become counterproductive.

68 Practical resources:

Cooperative learning and peer tutoring are important didactic strategies, but the majority of them (Student Team learning, jigsaw…41_{) concern the usage of writing skills}

(manipulation/transformation of the texts, resume etc…). In the case of illiterate CAD, the writing support is not adequate, thus the most effective results we can obtain from those techniques are limited to the oral skills and some very basic writing – recognition exercises. Furthermore, we strongly believe that in such a delicate phase of learning acquisition the following mistake must be completely avoided: there is the risk that in peer tutoring contests not all tutors have the adequate competences to help a tutee as far as writing skills are concern. This is the reason why we think that peer tutoring or cooperative learning, if applied, should be accompanied with the constant supervision of the teacher.

Among different activities of cooperative learning and peer tutoring that may be suitable to illiterate CAD we suggest:

a) The Open task: it is a kind of exercise that asks each component of the group to participate and contribute with their abilities. This way, even the low level students can participate in the task and find satisfaction when joining the activity.42

b) Activities of “empty information” and “information gap”: the first is the case of the

short interview; the second case is when each group has information that other

groups do not have, and must therefore communicate with them, for example, by describing images or contents, talk about event, etc. Techniques of the second case are for instance the roundtable and the three-step interview.

c) Social games: games played in groups.