Peer Learning

How learning with peers can boost – or inhibit learning

Learning is certainly more fun with friends – but is it better? Or alternatively is it because of the atmosphere and feelings of safety that promote learning rather than the friends themselves. Let’s review some of the research.

Recent research into seating positions during lectures at university showed that friends tend to sit together in consistent places e.g. at the back or front, and that groups of friends received similar grades. Is this a case of birds of a feather flocking together or is there something else happening?

In the educational world a lot of emphasis is given to the instructors and on the techniques they can use to stimulate learning. But learning in schools and higher education institutions always takes place with peers. This means that peers will be contributing to the learning effect of students irrespective of whether this is promoted or not.

This is known as ambient learning whereby unstructured processes and configurations of students contribute or inhibit learning in students. This could be because it is uncool to study, in my day it might have been sneaking off behind the bike sheds for an illegal cigarette for the sake of coolness, but it could also be the conversations around the learning material, and encouragement by peers to revise. This also in addition to the constellation of the class and the amount of disruptions, or not, that this may have.

So we can see there are different aspects to peer learning and peer learning can, therefore, be split into these groupings: