Lifelong Learning Programme

This project has been funded with support from the European Commission.
This web site reflects the views only of the author, and the Commission cannot be held responsible for any use which may be made of the information contained therein.

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This project has been funded with support from the European Commission. This web site reflects the views only of the author, and the Commission cannot be held responsible for any use which may be made of the information contained therein.

Teachers’ Guide

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ENHANCE STUDENTS’ SCIENTIFIC BASIC SKILLS THROUGH THEIR ACTIVE INVOLVEMENT IN THE LEARNING PROCESS

Table of Content

Chapter 1: Peer-learning education
1.2 Why do students succeed in learning in a mutual exchange with their fellows?
Peer-learning education as an educational methodology started to be developed as a teaching method in the 60’s, and has grown since then, although learning through peers has been primal to our species for millennia (Boyle, 2011). One of the major benefits of this knowledge method is the fact that students are more likely to hear and personalize a message, if they trust the messenger (Sloane, 1993). This aspect is particularly important among young people.

One of the areas in which peer education is mostly used is in health and science education at high schools. In these areas of knowledge, and given the particular difficulty of youth to trust adults and their resistance to express themselves, peers tend to be the immediate source of information and sometimes serve as models. Therefore, many programs facilitate and encourage this type of teaching, especially in science education with youths (Koballa & Glynn, 2007). Some authors believe that given the collaborative research in science, education should also be done through peer education, which should go beyond doing just group work. For cell biology, Tanner et al. (2003) summarized the benefits of peer learning and detailed practical approaches to its implementation in the classroom. Furthermore, Lord (2001), points out 101 reasons why biology teaching should be cooperative. Peer learning has also proved to have benefits compared to regular learning in physics by improving problem solving, thus fostering an increase in learning of concepts in this science field (Heller et al., 1992). In chemistry teaching, a study conducted in a chemistry laboratory, confronting collaborative learning, peer tutoring and individual learning, shows the two first ones outperforming the individual learning method, further proving that science can be more easily perceived with collaboration and peer orientation (Ding & Harskamp, 2011). Another study conducted in a chemistry laboratory came to the same conclusions, further pointing out that students following peer-led teaching and learning, when inquired, showed superior critical thinking skills, superior learning, and managed to give answers that were clearer and longer, compared with students that underwent conventional learning (Golde et al., 2006).
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