ABSTRACT
Teaching is more difficult in the 1990s than in the past, and most educators predict that it will become even more challenging in years to come. Exponential increases within the school curriculum, spectacular changes in student demographic characteristics (Hodgkinson, 1991), and dwindling instructional resources make it extremely difficult for even the most responsive teachers to provide a high quality education for all children in their classrooms (Miller, Barbetta, & Heron, 1994). For most teachers, there simply is not enough time in the day to meet all of their students’ instructional and emotional needs. Ironically, whereas teachers have searched for more effective strategies to cope with these escalating instructional demands, many may have overlooked one potentially powerful educational resource immediately at their disposal: the children seated in front of them. Children can serve as powerful instructional resources for one another, and the systematic use of peers as teaching assistants offers a viable instructional option for meeting many of the daily educational challenges that will confront teachers in the future.
