Peer Teaching

Think back to when you were a child, trying to learn all of the many things children learn outside the formal schooling process. Besides your parents, who were your most frequent teachers? Most likely your friends and siblings first taught you many of the basic social, communication, cognitive, and psychomotor skills that you took into and through your early years in school. You probably learned how to play sports, ride a bicycle, jump rope, and play games like tag by being told and shown by your siblings and friends. A child’s play is often free and unstructured, so young people rely on each other to teach them how to do the many things they learn as they grow up. Even in school, you probably still learned much from your fellow students, although most of your academic teaching was carried out by your teachers. We have known for a long time that children can teach other children and that in some ways those peer teachers can be as effective as or more effective than adult teachers.