The Comparative Influence of Individual, Peer Tutoring, and Communal Learning Contexts on the Text Recall of African American Children

Abstract

Peer tutoring strategies tend to use structured peer interactions and group reward contingency. This study was designed to offer a peer learning environment within which the putative communal tendencies of African American youth could be capitalized on to facilitate learning an academic task. There were 72 African American fifth-grade students (36 males, 36 females) randomly assigned to a communal learning, peer tutoring criterion, or an individual criterion context and given a text of prose to learn. Following the learning phase, students individually completed a recall task. A 3 2 between-subject ANOVA revealed that students under the communal learning context recalled significantly more text than students assigned to the peer and individual contexts. Additionally, communal beliefs were correlated with positive attitudes toward task engagement. No such positive relationships were found for individual belief. The discussion focuses on the use of cultural contexts for learning.