Learning words through teaching others. Tutors´ learning in a literacy tutoring program

ROSEMBERG, C. R.; ALAM, F.; MIGDALEK, M. J.; STEIN, A.

Congreso; EARLI 2016; 2016

This paper analyses the opportunities created by a literacy tutoring program for the discursive and vocabulary learning of the tutors (12-year-old children). The program was designed considering previous studies that pointed: a) the importance of explicit discourse and vocabulary in the literacy process (Dickinson & Tabors, 2001; Weizman & Snow, 2001); b) that, in the interactional situation (Chi, Siler & Joong, 2004; Chi & Roy, 2010; Roscoe & Chi, 2004, 2008), the tutors can learn through the explanations they give and through self-monitoring. In this study we analyze data of the implementation of the program with 70 12-year-old children (tutors) and 70 5-year-old children (learners) that live in urban-marginalized communities in Buenos Aires. Through a longitudinal design, we assessed the 12-year-old children at the beginning and at the end of the year, and we monitored the interactions of the tutor-learner pairs during the implementation. The assessment of the older children was focused on their abilities to explain and define words, given that these abilities are important for their role as tutors. We constructed categories of the strategies that the children (tutors) used to elaborate their own definitions. Based on these categories we drew up a ?degree of elaboration of the definition? index, that ponders the strategies used by the children to define the words. We videotaped the interactions between the tutors and learners and identified the exchanges wherein the tutors explained the words to the younger children. These exchanges were analyzed combining the Grounded Theory (Strauss & Corbin, 2002) method and the conversational analysis (Goodwin, 2000). The results showed that, at the end of the year, the children (tutors) used more general categories, synonyms and nuclear or central properties in the definitions and, to a lesser extent, basic categories in their definitions. We observed a decrease in the use of non-nuclear properties, contextualizations and quasi-reiterations. This is reflected in the differences in the ?degree of elaboration of definition? index (at the beginning of the intervention: M= 1.51 ME = 1.3 DE= 0.45; at the end of the intervention: M= 2.71 ME = 2.6 DE= 0.56 Wilcoxon: z= -6.87 p < .001). The results of the qualitative analysis of the interactions showed that, to explain the terms unknown to the younger children, the older children used general categories or superordinate terms, relations of synonym, specific properties and contextualizations of terms in the illustrations or in the dramatizations of the meanings. In the discussion we took into account the results of other tutoring programs that evaluated the learning of the tutors.