Study of Reciprocal Teaching Effects on Reading Achievement and Self-Esteem of Primary School Students

The present study has investigated the effect of reciprocal teaching, also known as “cross-age peer tutoring” on reading achieve-ment and self-esteem of primary school students. The target population consisted of second and fourth grade students in the 19th educational district of Tehran. Among this group, 34 students (17 from the control and 17 from the experimental groups) whose grades were below the class average and 34 fourth grade students (17 control and 17 experimental) who volunteer-ed to act as substitute teachers, were selected for the sample group. The Cooper-Smith Self-Esteem questionnaire was used to investigate the self-esteem variable. Sample group subjects, were put randomly in the experimental group (17 second graders and 17 fourth graders) and the same number of students were assigned to the control group. The experimental group, trained through the Reciprocal Teaching method in 24 sessions, each session consisting of 45 minutes. Performances of the two groups were compared based on their reading capacity and the Cooper¬¬-Smith Self-Esteem Questionnaire (pre-test and post-test). Results of the analysis showed that the Reciprocal Teaching approach has positive effects on both groups: the reading achievement and self-esteem of the experimental group subjects (p< 0/01).