Peer Tutoring

Peer tutoring is commonly used to describe tutoring that is done between two people who are close in age and at a similar academic level. For instance, a high school senior who helps another high school senior in physics class would be considered peer tutoring. A high school junior who helps a high school freshman in biology would also be considered peer tutoring because both students are in high school, and therefore they are technically "peers."
Many high schools, middle schools and colleges have peer tutoring programs in which individuals who have done well in certain classes sign up to help others with the class. For many students, a peer tutor is just what they need to get back on track.
Other students may require a professional tutor, who may have more experience and resources available to help the student.

Topping and Ehly (1998) define peer-assisted learning as "the acquisition of knowledge and skill through active helping and supporting among status equals or matched companions" (1). Peer tutoring, as a specific form of peer-assisted learning, is a collaborative approach in which pairs of pupils interact to assist each other's academic achievement, with one pupil adopting the role of tutor and the other the role of the tutee. Reciprocal peer tutoring "employs same-age student pairs of comparable ability with the primary objective of keeping both peer student and peer teacher engaged in constructive academic activity" (Fantuzzo and Ginsburg-Block 1998, 121). This is in contrast to more usual forms of peer tutoring, which operate with different abilities in the pair and sometimes with pupils of different ages.

References

Fantuzzo, J., and M. Ginsburg-Block. 1998. Reciprocal peer tutoring: Developing and testing effective peer collaborations for elementary school students. In Peer-assisted learning, ed. K. Topping and S. Ehly, 121-145. Mahwah, NJ, & London: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

Topping, K., and S. Ehly. 1998. Peer-assisted learning. Mahwah, NJ, & London: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.