Effects Of Peer Tutoring And Computer Aided Instruction On The Acquisition Of Subtraction Facts By Students With Developmental Handicaps PDF Download

A pretest-posttest design was used to compare the effectiveness of computer-assisted-instruction (CAI) drill and practice with the effectiveness of same-age peer-tutor drill and practice on promoting mastery of multiplication facts. The subjects were students from three, fourth grade classes in the Reedville School District of Aloha, Oregon. Two fourth grade classes were randomly assigned to two treatment groups: CAI and same-age peer-tutoring. A third class was designated as a control group. Students in the CAI group drilled on multiplication facts independently at a computer for 10 minutes per day for 25 days. Students in the same-age peer-tutor group tutored classmates using multiplication flashcards for 5 minutes and were tutored for an additional 5 minutes for a total of 10 minutes per day for 25 days. The control group received traditional math instruction consisting of daily, one-minute, mastery tests. Drill and practice was independent and self-paced. Treatment consisted of drill and practice on multiplication facts with multipliers 0-9 and multiplicands 6-9. The pretest and posttest were computer-constructed criterion tests consisting of randomly selected multiplication facts from the treatment set. Fifty-two students began the treatment. Forty-five students completed treatment and the posttest. Analysis of variance and Tukey's multiple comparison test showed a significant difference between the CAI group (x̄ = 48.00) and control group (x̄̄ = 67.60) on the pretest. However, on the posttest, analysis of covariance revealed no significant difference among the groups (p = .05). Therefore, the null hypotheses for the study were accepted. The hypotheses predicted there would be no significant difference between the groups' mean math scores on the posttest. Although the study did not identify either CAI or same-age peer-tutoring drill and practice as more effective than the other, it did show both strategies to be equally effective in promoting mastery of basic math facts. The adjusted group means were CAI: 93.97 and same-age peer-tutoring: 93.43. In finding the two strategies to be equally effective, the study identified same-age peer-tutoring as a cost-effective alternative to CAI drill and practice. The findings have implications for staff development, curriculum planning, and for teachers' selection of drill and practice strategies.