Peer tutoring is a wonderful way to educate children with autism. In the school where I teach, I’ve seen about a half dozen peer tutoring programs. Since our entire student body has children on the autism spectrum, the tutor is not a typically developing peer. The peer tutors at our school are the students who can attend to tasks fairly well, speak, and have mastered the skill which they will teach to their peer. (These are not specifically outlined requirements, just general prerequisite skills.)
In addition to the specialized school setting, I’ve also observed children with autism in general education environments and seen equally cool things happen. The behaviors that originally brought the child out of public education sometimes decrease. This could happen for a number of reasons, but it is most exciting when the child with autism has decreased behaviors because they are blatantly modeling the appropriate behavior of their peers.
I recently read an article from the Journal of Autism & Developmental Disorders (2008) entitled “Teachers’ Peer Buddy Selections for Children with Autism: Social Characteristics with Peer Nominations.” (The abstract for this article can be viewed here.) I thought I might find out more information on peer tutoring for children at our school and ended up learning a little bit about how students in general education settings feel when asked to introduce their disabled peers to their own daily environment, academically, socially, and recreationally.
The study outlined the type of peer a teacher and/or their students would chose to tutor a child with autism. The results were as I’d predicted, that both teachers and their students would chose peers that were liked and popular over those who were not. This supported research from Sasso and Rude (1987), that popular peers are effective in social change. Not surprising, right?
Leaders are generally chosen because they are the most liked and they are most qualified for the job. This means that the public school systems need to enact more peer tutoring programs in a better effort to mainstream our children with autism into the general population. If the popular children are picked to peer tutor, they will influence other children toward this trend. Additionally, they will learn the importance of tolerance and patience while beginning to understand a whole new group of people.
I’ve seen very cool things happen with peer tutoring. I’ve seen children who would naturally retreat into themselves reinforce their peers with high five’s and ‘good job!’s. It’s very exciting when you see two peers who struggle to communicate as part of their disability, actually teaching one another. They’re each learning their own capabilities while empowering another individual with the same disability.
Tags: autism, peer buddy, peer tutoring, student leadership
