Can Students Really Peer Teach?
As part of the Instructional Methods for PE (IM4PE) within my #PEPLC group I decided to research further into the use of one type of instructional model, Peer Teaching. Peer teaching is a method I regularly use in class as it provides great leadership opportunities for students and also provides me with an opportunity to better understand their own understanding of the task and their own knowledge and understanding. Peer Teaching also gives me a greater amount of time to move around the classroom, to assist where needed and to also listen to the conversations that are taking place, which provide me with plenty of useful information about my students’ understanding. Personally I feel that my students really enjoy peer teaching as the students hold a large amount of responsibility in getting the task(s) completed and to what level they are completed at, as well as having a hand in their own learning.
Having used Peer Teaching on various occasions and covered some background reading on the topic in the past, I felt like I had a sound understanding of this Instructional Model (IM). As with any unit of work, I always ask myself some important questions which help me decide which IM may be the most appropriate to use. What do I want my students to get out of this unit? Will the intended IM help me achieve this? How will I implement this model into the unit? Thanks to Antonio Calderon (@acluquin), another member of the #IM4PE Asia-Pacific Team, I was able to access a paper by Wallhead, T., and O’Sullivan, M (2007) titled, ‘A didactic analysis of content development during the peer teaching tasks of a Sport Education season.’ (Full Reference Below). This paper gave me a far greater understanding of the use of Peer Teaching within PE, specifically within the Sport Education Context, some of which I will try to discuss here.
Current Research on Peer Teaching
Previous literature on the topic has highlighted that peer teaching is a powerful tool for developing students’ social and emotional well-being, which is why this model is often used in Sport Education (SE), where there is a greater emphasis on developing leadership skills. However there are concerns that the use of peer teaching, (especially within a SE context), is less effective at developing students’ motor skills and tactical competency. Previous research has states that students lack the leadership skills needed to peer teach and more crucially do not have the skills or knowledge to provide quality error detection feedback to their peers, an essential component for developing peer’s skills further. However Wallhead and O’Sullivan set out to explore this claim further.
How was the research undertaken?
Over a 15 week period, they observed and analysed one team (6 students) from a class of 8th grade students who were using peer teaching within a sport education unit (tag rugby). Dialogue and actions during the class were recorded, while pre-lesson teacher briefing to the student coaches were observed. Student coaches were also provided with coaching task cards. The pre-lesson briefing consisted of an explanation of the upcoming lesson’s tasks, highlighting of potential problems, and an opportunity for student’s to express any concerns they had. The coaching cards contained information and diagrams about the tasks, including key coaching points. Interviews with the student coaches took place after the pre-lesson briefing and after the lesson, while the participating students were also interviewed after each lesson. During these recall interviews, participants were asked to reflect on the lesson.
What did they find out?
Students found the pre-lesson briefing and the availability coaching task cards very useful in helping them to set up and deliver the intended tasks, resources which Wallhead and O’Sullivan also concluded to be useful for the student coach. These two resources of information also helped the student coach to coach the key points and identify key errors in their peers’ performance. These were found to have improved the student coach’s confidence and content knowledge. Wallhead and O’Sullivan also suggest that by providing the student coach with more information, it improves the power balance that normally exists between peers, in favour of the student coach, which can be vital in any peer teaching activity. However it was also noted that student coaches sometimes overwhelmed their peers by unloading too much information onto them in too big a chunks and failed to provide enough clear demonstrations, which caused some confusion within the group. Student’s failed to recognise these two errors as potential problems in their post-lesson interviews to explain why they may not have been successful in a task, raising these as issues which need to be addressed in pre-lesson briefing in the future.
They also found that the timing and frequency of the class teacher’s interventions were crucial in aiding the student coaches to deliver key coaching moments which were crucial for developing students’ motor skills and tactical competency. It was important for the teacher to recognise when the intended learning outcomes were not being achieved and had to step in to realign the students towards the intended outcomes. Teachers have far more pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) than students, and it is this advanced PCK which students do not have, that is needed to overcome these problems. The approach this teacher took was to create a ‘coaches corner’ where the teacher was able to demonstrate the task to the student coaches and emphasised critical content knowledge, or even modify the task to help them identify and overcome any problems with the task. Student coaches could then return to their team and re-attempt to teach the task and provide adequate solutions to any problems that the team were having, which allowed them to complete the set task and achieve the desired outcomes. It was noted that without the teacher’s intervention, students struggled to elaborate on content further than what was on the cards, which prevented peers from completing the task successfully.
Finally, Wallhead and O’Sullivan found that student coaches gave sufficient feedback which was appropriate and beneficial for their peers. The student coach was generally able to provide error correction feedback for simple problems (such as maintaining possession and using space), however the student coach was rarely able to identify a key error and fix it when a skill or tactic was complex (such as creating and defending space), or if there was more than one problem when the task was performed. Student coaches could identify there was a problem, but were unable to identify the specific problem, which prevented their peers from developing and completing the task. Wallhead and O’Sullivan explain this as students not having enough pedagogical content knowledge, and therefore it requires the interception of the teacher to re-align the student’s learning towards the intended goal.
Conclusion
Although this was just a small study, there were still some important issues which are worth highlighting for anyone who intends to use peer teaching in the future, especially within a Sport education context. Wallhead and O’Sullivan found that students were capable of using peer teaching to set up, organise and lead tasks. Student coaches are also able to provide sufficient feedback which corrected errors in simple skills or tactical understanding, which allowed peers to develop and achieve some of the intended outcomes. However, it is important for teachers to recognise when they need to step-in to realign the students to the intended task objectives, necessary when the task involves a skill or tactical idea which is considered complex. Therefore the teacher compensates for the students’ lower level of pedagogical content knowledge. Although the term ‘complex’ is not defined in the text, this is down to the teacher’s own interpretation, and therefore it is important that the teacher has a good understanding of what their students are capable of.
This study also highlighted that pre-lesson briefings and coaching task cards were instrumental in allowing students to set-up, organise and deliver the intended tasks, as well as helping them to anticipate what problems may arise and what feedback may be required. However, the lack of importance placed on demonstrations during these pre-lesson briefings and on the coaching cards, prevented the students from achieving more. Therefore in the future it may be worth highlighting and including the importance of demonstrations within these resources. Previously Siedentop and Tannehill (2000) have suggested that all students should experience a guided-practice phrase, which would allow them the opportunity to observe demonstrations of the task with the desired outcomes, although this could undermine the position of the student coach. With technology becoming ever more present in schools, I believe that this is a realistic suggestion. With technology, student coaches will have access to quality content which can be used to aid their coaching, and also provide a greater visual guide for their peers who can review their own performance through video recordings and comparison programmes, such as Coaches Eye.
Overall I believe that peer teaching is an effective model to us and is a suitable model to be used within Sport Education. However, the planning that takes place before the unit, along with the information that is shared and discussed during the pre-lesson briefing are crucial for the student coaches, and therefore achieving the objectives of the lesson. It may be appropriate for teachers to limit the level of skills and tactics they focus on, or use more repetition when using this model, so that student coaches and their peer’s can achieve more success.
Wallhead, T., and O’Sullivan, M. (2007) A Didactic Analysis of Content Development During the Peer Teaching Tasks of a Sport Education Season, Physical Education and Sport Pedagogy, 12 (3), pp. 225–243.
