Peer-Educators in STEM

Peer-Educators are Interdisciplinary

While doing research to design this role, I couldn’t find any scholarship concerning a peer-educator’s effect on tutor training. What I did find were examples of peer-educators in STEM fields; nursing/medical instruction, social psychology, and library instruction.

In one study of second- and third-year nursing students as peer-teachers for first-years, first-year students appreciated having someone at their level, who had been through the exam process before. While these researchers didn’t get the expected participation from first-year students, those who answered the survey responded in favor of the peer-teachers, and attributed success to this design and practice.

Researchers also included reflections from the second- and third-year students. Peer-teachers reported that they were able to learn to teach, given an opportunity to sharpen their professional and personal skills, and even helped their credibility with peers in the field of study.

In a study of middle and high school students, researchers used the identity-based model of motivation in social psychology to employ what they name “near peers” to study effects on student motivation and success. They conducted a five-day study with 27 high school student mentors and 65 eighth grade mentees.

Even brief interactions with near peers helped students' belief in their abilities and persistence to achieve goals in both the short and long term.

Another study of peer-educators in library instruction revealed that students felt more comfortable learning from the undergraduate instructors than from librarians. At the University of Florida, anthropology students were invited to design a course where they could train other students to use library resources.

Results showed that implementing peer-educators in library instruction let librarians re-think how they approached training. The partnership with the anthropology department also allowed them to reach more freshmen and sophomore students. The peer-educators benefited the most; They were given the opportunity to conduct a research project on peer instruction that included experience with collecting and coding data. One student developed the experience into an honors thesis.