Weaker Readers as Experts: Preferential Instruction and the Fluency Improvement of Lower Performing Student Tutors

This study attempted to determine whether giving lower performing tutors preferential instruction over their higher performing tutees before they engage in peer tutoring sessions may help increase the reading achievement for these lower performing tutors. The preferential instruction consisted of giving adult-delivered instruction in a targeted text only to the tutors. A comparison group of lower performing tutors was created in which both the tutors and their tutees received similar instruction in the targeted text, thereby eliminating the preferential instruction for the lower performing tutors. Tutors were assessed in reading fluency accuracy and fluency rate. Follow-up analyses, using video data, were employed to examine tutor and tutee behaviors which may help to explain the quantitative findings. Eighty second grade students (40 lower performing tutors and 40 higher performing tutees) from two urban public schools participated in the study. Results indicated that the experimental tutors significantly outperformed the comparison tutors on both fluency accuracy and fluency rate after completing the tutoring tasks. The study suggests that the lower performing tutors benefited from being positioned in the expert role.