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1 reference
Topping reviews developments in peer learning from the early 1980s through the mid-2000s, concentrating on peer tutoring, cooperative learning, and peer assessment. The field had expanded beyond fixed, one-to-one tutoring into reciprocal, same-age and cross-age arrangements, whole-class cooperative structures, online interaction, and participation by learners with varied needs.
Research increasingly recognised benefits for helpers as well as those helped: explaining, questioning, monitoring, and responding can deepen the helper’s cognition, metacognition, communication, and confidence. The article integrates theoretical perspectives around cognitive conflict, elaboration, modelling, scaffolding, feedback, motivation, affect, and social interdependence rather than attributing effects to contact between peers alone. It stresses implementation integrity—roles, tasks, training, interaction quality, monitoring, and duration determine whether a named programme actually produces the intended learning processes. Cognitive gains matter alongside social and emotional outcomes, inclusion, cost-effectiveness, and sustainability.
Technology can widen access and mediate exchange but does not remove the need for purposeful structure. For educators, peer learning is a broad design family, not a single method: matching the format to goals, preparing participants, and examining both partners’ outcomes are essential.
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