5 Analyze Difficult Tutoring Situations
You have been tutoring for at least 50 hours at this point and your experiences will help you to gain a greater understanding of ways that tutor can adapt the learning experience for the tutee. As part of a small group of tutors, you will develop a case study about one aspect of tutoring that has proven to be a challenge to you. This case study will be a descriptive, explanatory analysis of a particular type of tutoring event that you and your group members have experienced. An explanatory case study is used to explore why and how this may have happened and to look for underlying principles that may be used to analyze future events and lead to better outcomes.
Case Study Activity:
- Your Trainer will lead a whole group brainstorm to come up with a variety of ongoing difficult tutoring situations that have happened in the past. The group will cluster these situations into related types by similarity.
- The Trainer will assist the tutors in picking a theme that resonates for them and then forming groups of three to four around a given theme. Working in these groups and using your best facilitating skills, create a case study of an ongoing tutoring situation in your theme area.
- List the events that make up the situation that you are working with.
- Organize the flow of these events in a series of two or more tutoring sessions.
- Brainstorm the background elements that would contribute to this series of events.
- Create a realistic narrative of the dialogue around this tutoring session ensuring that the narrative is reliably supported by the background and the events.
- Include elements that may change between sessions.
- Include any other related elements that might impact on how the sessions are conducted.
Your group will give a short presentation on your case study to the larger group and will listen to the presentations by others.
- The Trainer will use Socratic questioning to lead the whole group in picking out themes and principles from the collection of case studies.
Best Tutoring Advice to Self and Others:
With these in mind, write a paragraph of your best advice to yourself (and others) as a tutor.
What are the strategies that you do and can use to manage difficult situations and to fulfill your tutoring mandate and responsibilities?
