Reenvisioning and Redesigning Tutoring

Tutoring is a form of instruction and dialogue that has rarely been researched. This is an unfortunate situation, as so many districts and schools employ and find volunteer tutors who spend an inordinate amount of time individualizing instruction. In fact, tutoring is one of the most neglected aspects of the teaching and learning process and communication acts. Tutoring through dialogic communication is envisioned as a growing form of interaction in the 21st century, as all of the articles and researchers-scholars in this issue would argue, and important for several reasons.

First, tutoring gives the teacher-tutor an opportunity to focus on a single individual student, as articles in this special issue illustrate; conversely, it gives the student an opportunity to interface directly and spontaneously with a teacher. This one-on-one communication allows each of the interlocutors an opportunity to participate in a one-to-one dialogue that is unique and different from group talk, although how so has yet to be scientifically scrutinized. With class sizes increasing rapidly, especially in financially limited schools and districts, the one-to-one dialogue time is a treasure of possibilities for learning and hope.

Second, the nature of thought and language during tutoring can be uniquely adapted to the context, the text genre, the task at hand, the culture’s expectations, or individual and computer processes, as illustrated in all of the articles in this issue, most specifically those by Falk-Ross, Dealy, Porcelli, Hammond, and Evans (“Afterschool Programs for Bilingual Students: Preservice Teachers’ Perspectives and Students’ Achievement”), Madden and Slavin (“Evaluations of Technology-Assisted Small-Group Tutoring for Struggling Readers”), and Fitzgerald and Palincsar (“Peer-Mediated Reading and Writing in a Digital, Multimodal Environment”). Vygotsky’s emphasis on thought as it relates to oral language addressed in Thought and Language and related papers by followers of Vygotsky (e.g., John-Steiner, 2007; Kozulin, 1986) suggests that learners require a time and place to think through ideas (whether it be for writing, e.g., in Horowitz & Wilburn’s article; or for reading, as in Slater & Groff’s article). Some of these articles give attention to the weaknesses in critical thinking during prereading and prewriting. This journal’s articles suggest that the prereading and prewriting times are of paramount importance in formulating ideas, arguments, and interpretations and can be effective in developing the various acts of reading or writing needed for schooling. Tutoring gives students time and guidance to think through ideas and talk about them—prerequisites for learning through text sources. Based on theoretical work by Teun van Dijk in 1980, Horowitz and Wilburn (“Creating a Macrostructure in Academic Writing: Contributions of Tutor–Tutee Interaction to Performing a Text Revision”) trace how a college student produces a macrostructure in academic essay writing through dialogic intervention by a tutor that facilitates text revision.

Third, this interactive talk can free the learner to explicate ideas that are in print and will help the learner advance his or her thinking, as is demonstrated in Falk-Ross and associates’ article. They highlight students’ misunderstandings, confusions about texts, and conceptual changes that often occur in the classroom and how these may be resolved through focused interactive negotiation during tutoring. Falk-Ross and associates argue for the value of practice with language-expanding interaction through approaches and strategies that may need to be developed outside of the classroom. The suggestion that teachers use case studies to add to their understanding of how tutoring works in after-school programs is important for educators.

This development of individual meaning through interactive talk is also brought forward by Slater and Groff in their article “Tutoring in Critical Thinking: Using the Stases to Scaffold High School Students’ Reading and Writing of Persuasive Text,” in which they base their unique study of the development of critical thinking for reading and writing persuasive text on a model of argument complemented by a series of fundamental classification questions, or stases, to support meaning and guide prewriting. Their quantitative study of eight minority struggling 10th-grade writers’ persuasive papers in a classroom context follows a day-by-day list of methodology elements to guide readers’ focus on the study’s development. Their article contributes clearly to readers’ knowledge of effective approaches for supporting critical thinking during reading and writing.

Fourth, tutoring is evolving in structure and content. The study of tutoring will require a reenvisioning of relationships and forms in the 21st century given the new populations to be served (not only local but international in scope, binational and second language learners, special populations needing extra guidance) and given the new requirements of multitext reading, multimodalities, and multisource uses (text, video, images, YouTube). Further discipline knowledge in the sciences and arts and humanities is more complex in school instruction and growing in scope. Given state standards and common core expectations, students are expected to dig more deeply and expand the scope of knowledge they acquire and use. Researchers are only beginning to understand how to help students develop discipline knowledge and how to best use new forms of media for learning in the disciplines. For example, Hoffman and Wetzel, in their article “The Practice Turn–Literacy Tutorial Studies: Exploring Some Design Principles for Tutoring in Preservice Teacher Preparation,” explain how they investigated the core elements for building preservice teachers’ field-based tutorial experiences through practice using a variety of textual resources for models of good instruction through video cases, reflection/discussion of observed activities, and access to Web-based resources comparable to the video-streamed case studies research with young learners. Their emphasis in this study was on the use of literacy tutorials in learning to teach with a focus on writing. As Hoffman and Wetzel discuss, tutoring should be more than a one-time event; it should be developed across time and contexts for preservice teachers. This will require ongoing measurement of cohorts of students organized by specific interests, bilingual competencies, and special education. In their research, video cases are the tools for learning to teach and for research analyses.

Redesigning tutoring for the 21st century and the shifting nature of identity

In all of the articles presented in this issue, there are signs of tutoring influencing the identity of the tutor—and the identity of the tutee. We hypothesize that these individual identities, and sometimes even group identities, such as noted in the Fitzgerald and Palincsar article, take on changes. Also, there are changes in identity construction from the onset of the tutor–tutee discourse reaching to the end of the performances involved in tutoring. There is a shift in persona and self-confidence about reading—and writing. We hope there is greater critical reflection and high-level thinking. It is our recommendation that these transformations of identity are worthy of further research once the present articles have been read.

What are some of the identity shifts? The tutor must ascertain where the student reader or writer is strong, okay, or weak. The tutor’s role initially is exploratory, and the design of the tutoring begins to take on a shape of its own—different from the evolution of large-group or small-group classroom instruction. In a one-to-one exchange, the tutor begins to learn about the tutee’s strengths in reading or writing, motivation levels, and past experiences with classroom assignments and ultimately identifies approaches for relating to the student and strategies that will be useful in guiding (not overpowering) the student to levels of proficiency and achievement. As the tutor shifts in the performance of engaging with the student and offers suggestions, so the tutee shifts in self-perception or even role and perspective in the uptake of these suggestions. Falk-Ross and colleagues in this issue use a conceptual change model to characterize intricacies of mental shifts. Markers of engagement such as self-monitoring and on-task behavior can be identified. We have yet to learn through research how talk (about text) influences changes in identity as a learner gains self-confidence about literacy. It is evident in a number of articles (e.g., articles by Fitzgerald & Palincsar and Horowitz & Wilburn) that there is an addition to intellectual, social-emotional growth.

Formulating new research designs

Research may be based on cognitive goals, social-emotional development, plans for curriculum changes, or framing of contexts or shifts in talk and identity goals.

First, we can learn a great deal about one’s comfortable natural identity and thinking shifts in tutorials by recording dialogues through audiotaping or videotaping with attention to body language, gestures, and face-to-text gazing and expressions of engagement or argumentation. New designs for studying tutoring will also require accounts such as auto-ethnographies or biographical sketches that characterize tutor and tutee growth trajectories and the overlapping of the two. Prosodic features of the discourse used by tutee and tutor can reveal more than words alone can convey. In their study of macrostructure building, Horowitz and Wilburn study a Hispanic English as a second language student’s deletion, generalization, and reorganization in writing through audiotapes, videotapes, and dialogue analysis of the composer.

Fitzgerald and Palincsar emphasize peer interaction, collaboration in pairs through the use of digital environments that can be copied and analyzed through discourse analyses. They refer to an event-based approach for analyzing their case studies across lessons including student pair reading, viewing, drawing, and writing, with audio recordings of student talk and screen captures of artifacts produced in digital settings to study science topics such as atoms, evaporation, gases, and liquids. With attention to intertextuality, new ways of cross-referencing and visualizing are contained in talk analyses. Slater and Groff highlight student collaboration in persuasion using a stases problem-solving strategy (of fact, definition, quality, policy, and jurisdiction) for constructing claims and supports in the Toulmin model with a real-time data collection method. Madden and Slavin address a new format as well using tech-assisted small-group tutoring.

Second, the tutee may not be accustomed to one-to-one dialogue or peer dialogue and attention. The tutee will reveal his or her strengths and weaknesses and what has and has not worked in the classroom learning situation. The tutee must trust the tutor or group of peers who offer input; believe that the support has useful knowledge, empathy, and interest for helping the tutee; and believe that there are avenues available for building performances in reading and writing. The tutee must be willing to risk failure and feel a sense of confidence in moving forward. Each article in this issue provides a unique approach for introducing a new format and negotiating an effective learning environment.

Third, the talk that ensues by tutor(s) and tutee has to be what Nystand, Wu, Gamoran, Zeiser, and Long (2003) referred to as a reciprocity. The individuals are on equal footing as collaborators. The task of succeeding is obtainable. Madden and Slavin’s research considers the efficacy of computer-assisted tutoring applications for small-group tutoring with students in Grades 1–3 based on research that indicates the positive effects of small-group intervention and their prior work in support of learning. Their research provides readers with a model of how technology can be integrated into a learning activity with a tutor rather than replace a tutor/teacher and represents a forward move in the area of after-school tutoring. Falk-Ross et al. achieved this reciprocity through a balance of students’ initiations and tutors’ responses. Slater and Groff invited students’ participation through critical thinking approaches. Hoffman and Wetzel offered preservice teachers space for reflection. Fitzgerald and Palincsar used a peer-mediated system for sixth-grade students to share understandings back and forth. Horowitz and Wilburn’s article demonstrates how this reciprocity is achieved between a tutor and a college student using a writing assignment.

Tutoring has historically functioned as a vehicle for advancing the learning of students and adults who want or need additional support with specific new knowledge enhancement. Today, in the 21st century, its purposes, format, and uses are far more varied. This special issue thus opens up new venues for research and training and opportunities for student growth in reading, writing, and learning.

Guest Editors,

Francine Falk-Ross and Rosalind Horowitz