A peer education experience in the high school focused on the parabola

Abstract

The article presents the experience of a first approach to peer education, both for the teacher and for the students, realized in a III class of high school. The methodology used is that of peer tutoring, characterized by the work in groups made up of students with higher disciplinary level (tutor) and by lower level disciplinary student (tutees). The days of the experience are commented on the basis of the analysis of recordings made during the works; in addition, the questionnaires and the collective discussion carried out at the end of the course are qualitatively analyzed, in order to identify the strengths and weaknesses of the experience. The focus of the analysis mainly concerns aspects related to the applied methodology, and not to the role played by the mathematical context. On the one hand, we highlight the critical nature that peer tutoring plays when no cooperative activities have ever been carried out, and on the other hand, it is pointed out the need, for an effective educational action, to combine teaching approaches both cooperative (among students) and orchestrated from the teacher, in a dialogic perspective that does not foresee the exclusive use of one method rather than another.