I’m not much of a fan of peer tutoring, so-called discovery learning, and the like. My belief has always been that my school district pays me a moderate amount of money on the assumption that I know more math than anyone else in the classroom, and thus I should do the teaching. Math Curmudgeon agrees:
I personally hate it. I’ve hated it since 7th grade when teachers started “encouraging” me to tutor other kids. I hated it in high school because I always got paired up with kids I didn’t like or who resented that I was smarter than they were. Call me selfish? Tough shit; I was a teenager. It was NOT MY JOB. Teenagers have enough stress in their lives.Telling them they’re responsible for some meathead’s education? Oh, yeah, that is a *great idea*. I won’t require anyone to do it. EVER. Purely voluntary, “working together”? Absolutely. Homework club? Bring it on. Labs? I’ll encourage collaboration but if a student wants to go it alone, I won’t stop them.
Read the rest of his post for the fine print on “the research”.