Peer Tutoring as Pedagogy: An Exploratory Essay

Peer tutoring is a practice often used in highereducation settings to create an extended learningenvironment for students, a space beyondthe classroom and outside the teacher-student dynamic.Peer tutors are students who are “at a similarlevel of educational achievement as the studentswith whom they are working” (Sanford, 2021, p.6), acting as guides and role models for the learningbehaviors and thinking associated with being agood student. The peer tutor is not the sage at thetop of the mountain but a fellow climber on the trail(Sanford, 2021). Peer tutoring has been considereda basic pedagogy “expressed in different ways indifferent kinds of interactions” (Sanford, 2021, p.54). However, what these different ways and kindsmay be has yet to be described.