Peer Study Team in Physics — An Action Research

LET’S ADMIT it, many of our students find it difficult to learn physics. In one of my previous posts, I tried to enumerate the possible reasons why many students have a hard time learning Physics.

In addition to the strategies I employ to make physics interesting to my students, I organized peer study teams among my students. This program aims to mobilize my students to help each other in reviewing their lessons and ultimately, to improve their performance in class.

I did it in two different ways: Peer Tutorial for the Juniors, and Peer Study Team for the Seniors.

The Peer Tutorial

Based on their performances in the previous assessments, the students who are needing help were identified. I paired them with advanced students from the first section. I called them for a briefing where I instructed them how the sessions will be carried out. I gave them report sheets, which they are going to accomplish by writing down the date and time of the session, the topics they reviewed, and the references they used.

Prior to the review sessions, I administered a pretest on the topics and will assess them again afterwards to see if the peer tutorial sessions have been effective. I will compare the percentage gain of the students who went through the peer tutorial sessions with the percentage gain of the students who did not. I will also conduct focused group discussion after the post test to discuss how they carried it out and to discover ways to improve the process of tutoring.

The Peer Study Team

Like the third year students, the fourth year students were also classified into homogeneous groups. However, instead of identifying students-at-risk, I assigned all of them into peer study teams randomly. We wrote all their names into rolled sheets of paper and they each drew their partners. The study teams will be asked to perform an online activity together and they will also review the topics I have specified.

The students will also take a pretest and a post test to see if the system to going to work. Based on the result of their pretest, we will target a percentage gain and we will see if they can attain the target with the help of the peer study team program.

I will use the results of this action research to better plan my instruction for next year. Hopefully, with all these efforts, my students will learn to appreciate physics better and will learn the concepts more effectively.