PEER TUTORING IN MATHEMATICS. IMPACT ON ACADEMIC ACHIEVEMENT WITH PROPORTIONALITY CONTENTS IN 7TH GRADE

Peer tutoring can be regarded as an active methodology in which students help themselves in pairs. This methodology was used during 4 weeks with 7th grade students of a public high-school in Villarreal (Spain). Peer tutoring was implemented during Mathematics class, that is, four classes per week for a total of 16 peer tutoring sessions. The contents studied during these sessions were related to proportionality (percentages, rule of three, compound rule of three ... ) In order to assess the effectiveness of this methodology, a mixed design approach was taken. Hence, a pretest-posttest control group design was used to examine the impact on the academic achievement of the students. There were 20 students in the experimental group and 25 in the control group. Besides, discussions groups and interviews were held in order to analyze students' satisfaction with this methodology. Although students in the experimental group outscored control group students, no statistical significant differences were found in the academic achievement variable (Student's t = 0.3, p=0.77). Nevertheless, peer tutoring was regarded as a very enjoyable and useful methodology by most of the students in the experimental group. Most of them answered positively when asked about the possibility of performing more active methodologies like this.