THE EFFECT OF TUTORSHIP ON THE PEER ACCEPTANCE AND SELF-EFFICACY OF SOCIALLY ISOLATED CHILDREN

This study used a peer tutoring program as an intervention to raise the social status of socially isolated children and to test the theory of self-efficacy as an underlying rationale. It was hypothesized that if social isolates were involved in a work task their work with social status would increase. Tutoring was chosen as a work task. Since previous research suggested that when social isolates related to younger children their social interaction increased, it was hypothesized that social isolates who tutored younger children would gain in peer acceptance. The social isolates were fourth, fifth and sixth graders who received a low work with sociometric rating. There were five treatment groups. Group 1 tutored younger children. Group 2 was the attention control group and the children played games with younger children. Group 3 tutored same-aged children as a control for age. Group 4 received only two sessions of pre-treatment training. Group 5 was a waiting list control group only. The children in the first four groups received two sessions of training and then the first three groups continued to meet with the researcher for further training. The program lasted for twelve weeks. The isolates were rated by their classmates before and after the program on positive and negative forms of work with and play with nominations and sociometric roster-ratings. The results showed that only the children who tutored or played games with younger children increased on the peer nomination work with measure. High correlations were found between work with and play with measures with all five groups. Thus it is argued that the work with sociometric measure was influenced more by the existence of a social relationship between the isolate and the younger child than the type of skill that the isolate performs. The hypothesis that social isolates who tutored same-aged children would gain on sociometric peer ratings and the self-efficacy measures as compared to the training only and control groups was not supported. The hypothesis that self-efficacy would increase as peer acceptance increased was not supported