Effects of Nonreciprocal Peer Tutoring With Preschool Students

Morgan et al. (2020) paired two mixed-ability preschoolers. One child served as the tutor. The other child was the tutee.

The tutor never received the teaching targets. The tutor only delivered questions and praise. The team tracked how many correct names both kids said for pictures.

They used a multiple-baseline design across pairs. They started the tutoring at different times to show the effect.

Both the tutor and the tutee learned new picture names. The tutors learned names they were never taught. The tutees learned the names that were directly trained.

Correct answers rose only after tutoring began. This pattern repeated for both pairs.

Griffin et al. (1977) showed the same tutor gain in elementary spelling. Their tutors improved as much as their tutees. Morgan’s preschool results echo that 40-year-old finding in younger kids and in naming instead of spelling.

Jameson et al. (2008) pushed peer tutoring further up the grades. They trained middle-school peers to use constant time delay. Their study and Morgan’s both show typical classmates can run precise ABA trials with no adult in the middle.

Naresh et al. (2020) looks like a clash. They got untrained tact gains with adult-delivered immersion, not peers. The difference is who arranged the trials. Both studies prove untaught tacts can pop out in preschoolers; the agent is the only change.

You can let one preschooler teach another and both kids learn new words. No extra staff, no extra time. Try pairing a stronger speaker with a newer speaker during center time. Give the tutor a simple script: show picture, ask “What is it?”, praise for right answers. Watch both kids’ vocabularies grow.