Doctor of Education / Department of Special Education, Counseling and Student Affairs / James M. Teagarden / Students with emotional and behavioral disorders (EBD) have academic and behavioral deficits that impact their school success. For example, reading achievement of students with EBD is lower than typically developing peers and fails to improve over time without intervention. Despite this, the academic deficits of students with EBD often get overlooked and there are limited evidence-based practices for reading instruction to support them. This study sought to address this limitation by applying the Peer Assisted Learning Strategies (PALS), which has supportive evidence when applied to students with learning disabilities. The study involved eight 5th grade students, three were identified with EBD. The intervention, implemented by the classroom teacher, failed to result in gains in oral reading fluency, comprehension, and targeted social skills due to a variety of factors to be discussed. Limitations and future research are discussed, including considerations for future research.

In this mixed-methods study I report on a three-part investigation related to reading intervention at Grade 1 in one Ontario school board during the 2009-2010 school year. First, I report the results that Peer Assisted Learning Strategies (PALS) had on the reading outcomes for all Grade 1 students (n = 436) in terms of sex, aboriginal status, and at-risk status. Second, I use progress monitoring benchmark data to show how students unresponsive to instruction may have benefitted from additional instruction generated from monthly data-informed In-School Team meetings. Third, I report on educators’ perceptions of how monthly data-informed In-School Team meetings influenced their knowledge, confidence, and willingness to plan additional reading interventions for students persistently at-risk for reading failure. Findings indicate that compared to previous years, when PALS was not used, students in this study made significantly greater gains in reading scores. Boys made similar gains to girls, First Nations students made similar gains to non First Nations students, and at-risk students closed the achievement gap slightly with their typically-achieving peers. For students who did not make adequate progress in reading throughout the year a logistic regression analysis of the data indicates that the best predictor of at-risk status is not a student’s sex or First Nations status, but their letter sound fluency and word identification fluency scores at the beginning of the school year. Findings also indicate that the slope of improvement in reading scores for nonresponders begins to increase once In-School Team meetings begin. Educators’ perceptions of how the monthly In-School team meetings influenced practice differed according to the perceived role that each held of his or her position, and according to the level of involvement, training, and access that each had to the data used in this study. The more professional development that educators had in the theory, use, and application of progress monitoring data the more likely they were to report that they were willing to use it to inform their practice. Likewise, the more access that educators had to the data in terms of collecting, viewing, and interpreting it, the more likely they were in reporting knowledge, confidence, and willingness to use it to plan additional interventions for students. / Thesis (Ph.D, Education) -- Queen's University, 2011-09-13 10:03:09.664

The present review examined the effectiveness of three peer tutoring programs: cross-age peer tutoring, Classwide Peer Tutoring (CWPT), and Peer-Assisted Learning Strategies (PALS), for elementary students in the academic areas of math and reading. The research reviewed indicates students who participated in cross-age peer tutoring and CWPT had improved test scores on basic math facts as well as increased math scores on standardized assessments. Students also showed improvement in reading fluency, reading comprehension, spelling, and reading level after participating in cross-age peer tutoring and CWPT. High-, average-, and low-achieving students as well as students in special Ill education benefitted from these peer tutoring programs. In addition, both tutors and tutees received benefits from the tutoring programs, although fewer studies examined outcomes for tutors. Although cross-age peer tutoring, and CWPT resulted in mostly positive outcomes, this was not the case for the PALS program. Students participating in this program demonstrated little change from pre- to post-assessment. Since the PALS studies were better designed with tighter experimental control, it is less likely results were due to another variable. The cross-age and CWPT studies lacked the tight experimental control of the PALS studies.

Peer tutoring has become well-established in higher education and, with growing interest in peer learning, has started to gain popularity at school level with evident success in a range of settings and subject areas. Specific implementations such as PALS have become commercial successes based on offering attainment gains and social outcomes while reducing teacher workload. However, the impact on children with special educational needs is variable and there remains a lack of consensus on how PALS can affect performance for such students. Similarly, while there are some studies in the Middle East, the supporting literature for peer-tutoring and PALS is highly Western-centric and relies on adoption of constructivist principles in the wider classroom. Such values are uncommon in the Middle East, with the dominance of traditional values presenting a significant barrier to pedagogical innovation in Saudi Arabia. This study is therefore a timely exploration of how peer-tutoring can integrate with a group’s existing traditional pedagogical beliefs, engaging them in more active learning. The study used a mixed methods design to look at three main aspects of the PALS provision: the effectiveness of teacher training as preparation for leading peer tutoring, how fully was the Maths PALS programme implemented, and the impact on students with special educational needs in terms of a range of mathematics attainment and social outcomes. A 3-month intervention model is used to generate comparisons between an intervention and control pupils, helping to locate this study in the context of other quantitative research from Western countries. This is supported by qualitative data looking at the experiences of staff and students to better understand the specific experience of trying such a novel approach in a Saudi Arabian context. It is argued that attainment progress was satisfactory when considered alongside the substantial social progress, suggesting that peer tutoring has the potential to be a long-term learning strategy and, perhaps more importantly, can open the door to Saudi Arabia developing more purposeful and collaborative learning environments. The age grouping common in Saudi Arabia, spanning a much greater age range than is common in other countries, also offers insight into what makes cross-age peer tutoring effective and suggests that measuring progress in such situations requires more advanced statistical techniques. It is also shown that trainee teachers can be efficiently trained in using PALS and highly rate its impact, indicating that teacher training could be a valuable launchpad for pedagogical innovation in Saudi Arabia.