CAST and RAND have received $1.2 million from Ascendium to conduct a 3.5-year study examining how peer tutoring is designed, supported, and sustained in postsecondary education in prison.
As access to college education in prison expands, institutions face an important challenge: ensuring that incarcerated learners have access to the academic support they need to successfully navigate college-level coursework. Unlike students on traditional college campuses, incarcerated learners may have limited access to office hours, tutoring and writing centers, disability services, technology, and other academic supports.
Peer tutoring (academic support provided by incarcerated learners to other incarcerated learners) may offer one way to strengthen that support. Yet little research has examined how peer tutoring operates specifically within for-credit postsecondary education in prison. Existing programs vary widely in how tutors are selected, trained, supervised, compensated, and connected with faculty, and promising approaches are rarely documented in ways that allow other institutions to learn from them.
The new study will seek to address that gap.
We know peer-to-peer learning can be a powerful form of academic support, but we know far less about what it takes to build strong peer tutoring programs within the realities of postsecondary education in prison,” said Dr. Amanda Bastoni, CAST Principal Investigator and Senior Director of Workforce and Higher Education Implementation.
“This project gives us an opportunity to learn directly from the people doing this work, including incarcerated peer tutors, and turn what we learn into practical resources that other programs can use.
Learning From Programs in Practice
RAND and CAST will conduct in-depth case studies of at least five promising peer tutoring programs or models operating in for-credit postsecondary education in prison.
Researchers will speak with postsecondary faculty and administrators, prison education staff, tutoring coordinators, incarcerated peer tutors and, where feasible and approved, incarcerated learners receiving tutoring.
The research will examine questions including how programs recruit and prepare peer tutors; how tutors are supervised and coordinate with faculty; how programs are funded and sustained; how peer tutoring fits alongside other academic supports; and how institutional and correctional conditions affect what is possible.
RAND will lead the overall study design, project management, data analysis, and publication of the research. CAST will serve as a full research and research-to-practice partner, contributing to the analytic framework, research instruments, site-based data collection, interpretation of findings, and translation of the research into accessible resources for practitioners.
Dr. Amanda Bastoni will serve as CAST Principal Investigator, with Dr. Jessica Hall serving as CAST Co-Principal Investigator.
Dr. Lois Davis, Senior Policy Researcher at RAND will serve as Principal Investigator, with Dr. Jason Lee, serving as Co-Principal Investigator.
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