Peer teaching : preschoolers as teachers of a psychomotor task

The purpose of this study was to find out what kinds of teaching methods preschoolers use to teach their peers. This was done by pairing a four-year-old preschooler with a three-year-old preschooler and having the older child teach the younger child how to wallpaper. Forty dyads were observed and the teaching strategies incorporated by the tutors were recorded as they occured. Half of the dyads were from a preschool in which the children are grouped in a multi-age group setting and half were from a school which uses single-age grouping. The experimenter analyzed the types of teaching methods the four-year-olds used and related them to the type of grouping used at the preschools and to the sex of the tutors. The most frequently used teaching method was explanation, with demonstration and facilitation ranking second and third, respectively. The least used teaching method was praise. There was no significant difference in the types of teaching methods used by the children in relation to the type of grouping used by their schools. This study also found that there was no significant difference in teaching methods used by male or female tutors.