Classwide peer tutoring.

The purpose of this article is to discuss classwide peer tutoring as an effective instructional procedure. The article is organized into three major sections: [a] general principles of instruction, (bj description of classwide peer tutoring procedures, and (c) review of effectiveness data concerning classroom process (i.e., ecological and behavioral factors) and student achievement outcomes. It concludes with a discussion of the procedure and areas of future research and application. • T h e classwide peer tutoring system developed at the Juniper Gardens Children's project is, in large part, the result of efforts to improve instruction for minority, disadvantaged, and/or learning disabled children. This procedure has been developed through programmatic res e a r c h over the last 10 years. This research is beginning not only to yield important facts about school failure and achievement, but to demonstrate principles and procedures that are basic to effective instruction. T h e purpose of this article is to provide an overview of these principles, procedures, and research. In doing so, it will describe principles of instruction that have been developed, describe how the procedures are implemented, and provide a brief review of studies that demonstrate effectiveness of the approach. JOE DELQUADRI, CHARLES R. GREENWOOD, DEBRA WHORTON, and JUDITH J. CARTA are Project Directors, R. VANCE HALL is Center Director, Juniper Gardens Children's Project, Bureau of Child Research and Departments of Special Education a n d Human Development and Family Life, University of Kansas, Lawrence. PRINCIPLES OF INSTRUCTION Many of the principles and procedures to be described resulted from dissatisfaction with instruction in regular classroom settings (Greenwood, Whorton, & Greenwood, 1984; Hall, Delquadri, Greenwood, & Thurston, 1982). The "Opportunity to Respond" concept consequently developed, which is exemplified in the classwide peer-tutoring approach. One apparent factor emerged from direct observation research. Children were not actively engaged by the curriculum or the teacher's lesson (Hall et al., 1982; Greenwood et al., 1985; Stanley & Greenwood, 1983) . For example, one early attempt to measure generalization of one fourth grader's oral reading tutoring, from home to the classroom, was prevented due to no opportunity to read during a 2-week period (less than 10 seconds of reading were observed). The child typically sat alone at his desk during reading instruction while the teacher worked with groups. When his group was called for instruction, the reading period was usually over and it was time to move on to another activity. On the average, he was actively engaged for only 8 minutes of the Exceptional Children 535 60-minute reading period. This child was subsequently placed in a classroom for learning disabled (LD) students where he received approximately 6 minutes of oral reading practice each day. Within 2 weeks the child's correct oral reading rate had increased from 15.2 words per minute to 45.7 words per minute , while his error rate decreased from 9.8 error words per minute to 2.4 words per minute. Two years later this child, who originally scored at first grade, second month, was reading at the fifth grade, eighth month on a stan-