Four Classwide Peer Tutoring Models: Similarities, Differences, and Implications for Research and Practice

ABSTRACT

In this special issue, readers were introduced to three powerful, evidence-based instructional practices that hold great promise for ameliorating many of the reading difficulties encountered by pupils in 21st century classrooms. Peer Assisted Learning Strategies (PALS), ClassWide Peer Tutoring (CWPT), and START tutoring have emerged from over twenty years of solid empirical research as potentially effective tools in the fight to prevent/remediate reading failure, particularly among our most fragile learners (e.g., pupils with special needs, English Language Learners, and children from poverty and abuse). Here, we introduce a fourth peer teaching model, Classwide Student Tutoring Teams, that may be an appealing alternative for classroom teachers. We then provide a comprehensive analysis of common and divergent programmatic components across all four models and discuss the implications of this analysis for researchers and practitioners alike.