An Investigation of the Effects of Reciprocal Peer Tutoring on Achievement, Self-Efficacy, and Test Anxiety

Reciprocal peer tutoring (RPT) is a cooperative learning strategy which capitalizes on the benefit students receive from preparing to tutor one another. In these experiments we investigated the effects of RPT on the academic achievement, academic self-efficacy, and test anxiety of undergraduate students. Undergraduate education majors enrolled in either human growth and development or educational psychology participated in the study. Students developed a series of test questions, used these questions to quiz each other prior to unit examinations, and provided corrective feedback to the questions. Statistically significant findings were inconsistent across the experiments. In short, RPT appears to have, at best, inconsistent effects on achievement, test anxiety, and academic self-efficacy.