Peer Tutoring in Academic Settings

Abstract

In the early years of the nineteenth century, before public education existed, Joseph Lancaster founded a school for working-class children in London (Kaestle, 1973; Lancaster, 1803). Lancaster's belief that basic education would discipline and morally shape working-class children, together with his dislike for corporal punishment, attracted some financial supporters and hundreds of children. Faced with severe economic constraints, Lancaster devised a system of peer-mediated instruction which had immediate and dramatic international impact upon educational practice (Charconnet, 1975; Kaestle, 1975; Reigert, 1916/1969).