ABSTRACT
This study examined the impacts of peer mentoring on the academic achievement of Grade 10 students in science at Iloilo City National High School during the academic year 2024-2025. Using a one-group pretest-posttest experimental design, the research sampled forty (40) middle-section students through purposive sampling, with an average pretest scores below 75%. A researcher-made test, aligned with the Most Essential Learning Competencies (MELCs) in the K-12 Science Curriculum, was utilized to assess student’s performance pre and post intervention following a three-week peer mentoring programn. Statistical analysis revealed a significant improvement in posttest scores, highlighting the intervention's effectiveness.
The study recommended incorporating peer mentoring into science curricula, supplemented by systemic training for peer mentors and ongoing program evaluation. Beyond academics, the initiative has the potential to promote social and emotional growth, cultivating an inclusive and engaging learning environment. These finding contribute expanding evidence-based supporting peer mentoring as a highly effective intervention for improving science learning outcomes.
Keywords: Peer Mentoring, Science, Intervention, Academic Achievement
INTRODUCTION
Peer mentoring is a method of instruction that focuses on helping students who are struggling with a subject or skill. The main goal of peer mentoring intervention is to identify and address the root causes of a student’s struggles, rather than simply providing them with the same practice or repetition of the same learning materials. This intervention involves providing additional support, instruction, and guidance to help students overcome their difficulties and improve their academic performance (Pathak, 2023).
The academically challenged students in the class do not have the same cognitive ability as the other learners. The characteristics of academically challenged learners had to be understood to deal with them in the common class. The low performing learners cannot do complex learning which involves complex thoughts. They usually feel anxious and suffer from low self-esteem and poor concentration skills. They have problem transferring what they have learned from one task to another (Suranjana, 2021).
These learners demonstrate a problem not only for themselves, but also for their teachers as well. Frequent poor performance causes these students to become a burden not only to their parents, but also to the school and society. A student learns better from his peers than from most adults. The low-performing learners can be taught by peer teaching. The peer tutors who have the time and commitment to teach the low-performing learners can be trained to teach them (Suranjana, 2021).
Peer mentoring brings the class in a positive atmosphere with lots of energy and the student’s interactive attitudes towards each other. It improves their motivational aspects and holistic academic performance in school (Dowd, 2021).
They could inquire questions and acquire answers in terms that they could fully comprehend but of course the teacher facilitates and assists the intervention and clarify all misconceptions. Students that are confident and with high self-esteem feels that they are belong to the group, and as a teenager, they learn better with people of the same age as them (Gillies, 2022).
The importance of peer mentoring strategies, is that many scholarly attention has caught for its roles and benefits in educational institution. However, most of the previous studies, includes only those in the form of review articles and journals, have predominantly focused on the influence of peer mentoring on one or two aspect(s) of academic success, such as learner’s knowledge acquisition and productivity, as well as learner’s stress and anxiety management (Kachaturoff et al., 2020; Lane, 2020; Lim et al., 2022).
Teachers conduct these type of intervention called remediation program after every grading period every time a students get a below 75% on their grading period average. That practice has been in the Philippines schools system for years but for some undergoing the process it still feels the same recreating the class with the same boring topics and activities. The results have been minimal 5 out of 20 students under these remediation passed the post test. Coming up with this approach, the peer mentoring aims to investigate if the academically challenged learners could learn better and understand the topics if they are mentored by their peers.
As for science, 13% of Filipino learners were also on the low benchmark, which translate that they had “limited understanding of scientific concepts and limited knowledge of foundational science facts,” while 87% did not even reach this level. In the year 2022, 23% of Filipino students reached Level 2 or higher in science, while almost none of the students reached the top level of proficiency (PISA 2022 Results (Volume I): The State of Learning and Equity in Education).
The study aimed to investigating several Grade 10 learners specifically in Iloilo City National High School who are academically challenged in their class especially in science, it means they failed to reach the 75% as an average for the subject in a particular grading period, causing them to retain or drop the subject. Most of them are usually inattentive in the class, easily lose interest in the lessons, they have short attention span and lack some of the basic skills such as literacy and numeracy. Most of these students are enrolled under remediation classes for almost every grading period. This study has initiated because despite being in remediation classes, they continue to performing poorly in the science subject. A buddy system was implemented and evidences showed that with peers they can be motivated and interested to learn. Thus, the study will be conducted to determine the effects of peer mentoring on learner’s academic achievement in Science as a bases for intervention program in Iloilo City National High School for the School Year 2024-2025
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