extended essay tutors

extended essay tutors

The Role and Impact of Extended Essay Tutors in Academic Success

1. Introduction to Extended Essays and Their Significance

The IB website is keen to extol the virtues of the EE. Here are some of the IB’s claims about what the EE does. The Diploma programme, we are informed in its subject guide, “is a rigorous, academically challenging and balanced programme of education designed to address the intellectual, social, emotional and physical well-being of students. The programme has gained recognition and respect from the world’s leading universities.” The overwhelming thing that it draws attention to on its website is the amount that students will learn about the “research and writing skills” that they will need at university. For those presiding over the application process for entry to universities, there are other virtues extolled by the IB website.

The political argument for the IB is the fostering of international understanding. The academic argument is that the diploma sets high academic standards and has a breadth of study. In practical terms, that breadth is measured by the number of subjects that an IB student must study. At its heart is the EE, which is one of the only significant pieces of independent research that a student will have undertaken up to that point in his or her life, almost regardless of what he or she chooses to study later.

Some readers of this book may not be aware of the existence of the “extended essay” (EE) that forms the core of the International Baccalaureate (IB) Diploma. Although there is no exact equivalent of the IB diploma in the UK, there are some British schools that offer this qualification. It is, however, more widespread in international schools. In the US, students complete a similar, but less demanding, programme called the Advanced Placement.

2. The Role of Tutors in Guiding and Supporting Students

As visible forms of support, the written and verbal words of a tutorial can seem to be the mainstays of teaching. However, tutoring extends beyond this immediate, tangible communication. Past and outside the tutorial itself, the work of the tutor is manifest throughout the process of sponsors some critical habits of research and reveals the time and care required of early researchers to execute high-quality research and formal writing. Finally, our direct and face-to-face work with students (and through tutors, students), can reveal or correct widely held myths about “good writing” and “good students” and “the library.” But it’s not enough to merely correct these problems in individual essays: rather, our most telling moments in teaching may be when we indicate a gentler direction for sustained success to the student because we strongly believe that he is capable of it. Our work is never simple. There is always labor, supporting labor, lurking behind it. It is in the doing of so many small acts that the essays come to sustain tutor, student, and instructor alike.

As a tutor for the extended essay, you have a lead role in providing guided support to your students. The form this guiding support takes varies, from topics to research, to resources, to revisions, all tailored to the student’s unique goals, abilities, and in some cases, weaknesses. In other more obvious moments, the tutor will lead mini-lessons in formatting or scholarly voice or source analysis or other aspects of writing or critical thinking. Yet, while the tutorial meeting itself seems the most explicit moment in which a tutor guides a student, the most powerful aspects of tutoring may actually occur in the background. From the start of the extended essay process, tutors mentor their students empathetically and with high expectations. Students are far from perfect. But through our supportive care, critical writing instruction, and through our committed example, we can set them on a path toward being better, toward being stronger researchers, and ardent essay writers, and more instructed citizens.

3. Strategies and Best Practices for Effective Tutoring

According to a helpful tutoring process should focus on writing strategies, problem-solving strategies, summarizing importance, determining important information, integration of ideas, self-assessment, argument analysis, re-stating results and their importance, self-assessment of the content, and drafting suggestions. Therefore, according to these suggestions, the advisor should provide specific content suggestions and interventions, specifically tailored to the students’ issues to improve performance, collaboratively identified through self-satisfaction tests. According to “the combination of relevant, frequent feedback and practice provides a powerful and authentic assessment of learning, therefore the tutoring sessions should include relevant exercises. The advisor should discuss papers with the students, target essential academic skills (EAS), discuss generic writing skills, and encourage students to create a timetable to monitor individual progress. Granville says that the ability to provide structure for the writing process is crucial. Moreover, clinical encounters are very helpful in finding solutions to common problems. According to a “cognitive problem-solving approach includes training students to select appropriate strategies based on their goals and demands of the task”. Some useful reading lists on essays and personal statements are provided by some universities, such as Indiana University. To be effective in the role, the advisor should be “thoroughly prepared”, “organized”, and “set both personal and academic goals”. Tutors can use the students’ feedback to think of possible solutions by changing strategies and teaching methods. An essential element to motivating a student is setting concrete and achievable goals. In the “Rhodes” case study, the program participants worked on transition, retention, and learning assistance; 30% increased the number of hours studied, whereas 73% improved academic performance. The ability to build motivation within students, by creating a “strong relationship with our students”, is essential for success. In other words, it is opportune that tutors help students to drive interest in the learning subject and instill a sense of collaboration. In conclusion, a set of strategies could be proposed in order to empower students through learning practices that develop strategies for thinking and practical problem-solving. The importance of the role of the tutor will be essential, more than in the usual teaching activities, to highlight originality and creativity.

In order to create a successful tutoring, it is of fundamental importance to have a deep awareness of the learning styles, needs, goals, previous knowledge of the students, and to develop a pedagogical approach focused on the students. Effective tutors should provide an open and collaborative dialogue. To this purpose, one of the best pieces of information the tutor can collect is the students’ perception of their personal weaknesses, in order to define focused teaching-learning sessions that support every single student in the development and improvement of their skills. The first meeting could be an occasion to present a welcome speech briefly explaining how the program will run, focusing attention on motivational factors that help to build the group, overcoming self-uncertainty, personal expectations, and worries. The tutoring sessions should be well-organized, in order to avoid waste of time and misunderstandings. The students may appreciate the detailed and careful attention paid to assignments and should be aware of real examples of extended essays that are valid to follow or discuss.

4. Assessing the Impact of Tutoring on Academic Achievement

One of the goals of tutoring, as suggested by recent systematic reviews of the area, is to improve academic outcomes. Consequently, assessment of tutoring needs to address this issue of outcomes in particular: “How does tutoring impact student performance?” This involves an understanding of what is essentially a research question that is summarized as follows: To what extent does tutoring program Mk impact student outcome Yi, at Key Stage K for individuals who participate in Mk? Clearly, answering this question requires careful control over measurements of tutoring, participation, and outcomes—each of the variables is fraught with problems of definition and measurement in practice since in the context of extended essay work, “tutoring” may be informal, non-specific guidance more than it is “systematic” through INTO work. Furthermore, tackling this question requires evidence about the association of tuition with attainment for the students concerned and between the ratings of different stakeholders. Finally, and most problematically perhaps, to consider this question with any certainty requires some notion of counterfactuals and much more detailed information than can be addressed in this paper regarding potential mediating factors and interactions between many variables.

With the empirical support for Schwebel’s statement in Bull (2006) regarding the efficacy of “the extended essay guidance process,” and the characterization of this statement as “an act of faith,” it was important that some attempt be made to gauge more formally and systematically some of the ways that tutors (exemplars of the “extended essay guidance process”) impact on the academic performance of the students who they guide, and whether or not the process can be considered efficacious. To this end, however, a methodology or assessment framework or a set of validated measures to help evaluate the outcomes of tutor interventions were initially required; such measures would hopefully gauge some of the impacts of tutor interventions on student performance, progress, learning, and outcomes, and therefore go some way to help answer an important part of the question posed.

5. Conclusion and Recommendations for Future Practice

– Position the tutor as the primary driver of success or failure in the first stages of extended essay completion. – Exodus from supervisory role of CAS, TOK, GC, and Core. – Reduce meeting time and requirements and make the introduction motivational and achievable. – Beef up training and development for faculties and teachers working as EE supervisors; self-funding and placement of PP in teachers’ budgeting because good teachers can help make a good EE. – The Principal’s or coordinator’s tutoring/influence 1 student with 1 Principal or coordinator, separate and work directly with students as well. – Detach and study all the extended essay grade boundaries scaffolded by people who worked directly with students. – To further the study in other schools offering the International Baccalaureate. – How has this person’s role changed or helped the program? Does their role have maximum potential in the EE criteria? – The logical next question is to figure out what students should have in their EE introduction if tutoring by the different levels of teaching leadership occurs.

Implications: This small-scale research study offers some interesting implications that could be transferable to future studies. There may indeed be some practical implications that arise from this research study. These recommendations may be taken under advisement by the IB world to further assist future Diploma Programme students and tutors. It may also inform ideas and recommendations in future EE guides. The recommendations are as follows:

In conclusion, the type of relationship and the influence this person holds over a student is very important for academic success. A tutor who is supportive of the student’s needs and academic well-being, who is experienced in the questions the student may have, and who is experienced in the subject of the extended essay, will have a greater positive impact on a student’s EE success. On the other hand, when the tutor plays a more passive or almost insignificant role in the EB process of the student, the opposite has been observed.

It has become clear that a good extended essay tutor is very important and influential when it comes to academic success. My tutor provided me with clear aims and objectives. I knew his expectations of me and the level of work he was expecting from me. This resulted in a positive relationship with the tutor and ultimately led to a successful extended essay.

Over the course of the research I have conducted this year, I have come to some very interesting and yet surprising conclusions that some may have never considered before. I would strongly advise any future research students to consider the role of their tutor in their extended essay research, and this is why.