expert tutors

expert tutors

The Role of Expert Tutors in Academic Success

1. Introduction to Expert Tutors

Instead, the best-marked model of expert tutoring is offered by Stout in her book, The Feel of Silence. She discusses the historical emergence of meeting the needs of different types of learners, with the occasional tutor developing a ferocious expertise and entering the position of a master teacher. Master teachers eventually began to split their time between research (universities) and operating a school for master teachers (initially selective high schools). After World War II, in-home tutoring was largely restricted to the elite.

According to a hypothetical supply and demand curve, providing more expensive, refined services is a linear decision. The more effort required to provide a service, the fewer people will provide it. The fewer people who provide it, the more service will be desired. We know that expert tutors can demand outrageous rates (companies charge anywhere from $100-500 an hour), but why? A supply and demand curve model can’t explain that. What’s the feasibility in a competitive market where dozens of different companies can offer instant expert tutoring?

Every student has visited their teacher’s office hours, stayed after lecture to ask a few questions, or gone to a peer tutor for help. Unfortunately, these help sessions have a major downside – they’re common. Bills of unwitting students have attended tutoring sessions and still struggled on the test the next day. In the increasingly competitive college landscape, not just any tutor will cut it. More and more, students aren’t just looking for help. They’re looking for expert tutors.

2. Qualities and Skills of Effective Expert Tutors

The answer requires a lot of us. But it’s well worth the effort. We must find expert tutors who have the content knowledge (educational backgrounds or degrees), personality and professional acumen, teamwork abilities, teaching skills, and desire to support and help others. Furthermore, the tutor must have good listening, observation, assessment, and problem-solving skills; a high degree of empathy and encouragement; be naturally inquisitive and intrinsically motivated; the ability to adjust their communication style to match the other individual’s; familiarity with the materials and/or subject, as well as when other resources and their mentors need to be brought into the process; and a level of flexibility to think on their feet, multitask, and juggle all of the moving parts.

Now that we have a working definition of the tutor, or at least as good of a definition as the amorphous entity allows, let’s turn our attention to a variant of tutor: the expert tutors who serve as instructors in many of our core academic and musically oriented outreach programs. These student-centered instructors—one-to-one tutors providing individualized instruction matching and aiding individuals’ achievement—are what we generally refer to as ATP expert tutors. The question, then, is what makes an effective expert tutor?

Academic Tutoring: The Role of Expert Tutors

3. The Impact of Expert Tutoring on Student Achievement

The relatively conclusive empirical evidence regarding the static academic learning gains is important because there is a long-lasting sequelae of the effects on student academic achievement, as measured by achievement tests, for students in K-12, college, and even doctoral programs and beyond. That the programs significantly improved scores on the American College Test (ACT) and the German Advanced Particle Physics Examinations. There is a positive relationship between increasing the amount of time spent in higher learning tutoring relationships, after-school programs, or voluntary academic centers and academic achievement performance in subjects as measured by national or state tests in public or private schools or the more general Academic Achievement Composite (AAC).

The traditional static group differences of educational attainment, as measured by achievement tests, are impacted in a positive fashion the longer that students study with higher value-added tutoring or mentoring relationships. In particular, empirical collective evidence and individual empirical case studies suggest that programs, as diverse in objectives including K-12 levels, summer school, weekend or after-school programs within schools, single-sex schools, or international programs, demonstrate that high-value adding (or academic impact — as documented at the school, program, or center level) can result in average SAT improvements of 100-200 points after four 2-3 hour sessions per week over secondary school or 200-400 point improvements from the crown level of eighth-grade test scores to the SAT. Further, the significant academic improvements are associated with an increased sense of self-efficacy, confidence, and motivation that students report along with decreased levels of pressure and an improved quality of life and social relationships. The earlier intervention begins (pre-kindergarten level), the more significant the immediate test score and long-term academic sequelae. Accordingly, the findings contained in this paper suggest this may be a way to narrow the long-term gap between African American, Hispanic, and less economically privileged students relative to native white achieving students.

4. Best Practices for Engaging Expert Tutors in Educational Settings

Faced with the varied challenges of student development and support programs and in recognition of the impact that ‘expert tutors’ can bring to such programs, it is timely to consider best practices for engaging these individuals for results-based academic success. Commonly, program and service areas endeavor to recruit undergraduate students into part-time, semester-long student tutor/peer leader positions. The content of these programs can include discussing and demonstrating best practice for learning and academic skills, and the teaching and imparting of study strategies and cognitive learning methods, as well as active, collaborative workshops for individual or small group work. Tutored pathways, orientation week, and semester social events are also generally advertised and promoted. In order to identify best practices for engaging tutors as part of these programs, we interviewed educational designers and coordinators who were responsible for these tutoring modules. Practices and ideas reported by these staff then informed our continuous recruitment, training, and support and retention of the 32 student tutors working in the program. Ethical considerations involving the implementation of a decision-making rationale matrix will be demonstrated, and best practice guidelines will be offered for student involvement in undergraduate educational engagement and tutorial programs.

There is a growing recognition of the benefits and impact of involving expert tutors in different fields of education. However, literature on the best practices for effectively engaging the services of such individuals is limited. Expert tutors can be highly effective in enhancing the student learning experience and are equipped to personally relate to their students’ academic journeys. They extend student knowledge and understanding and are capable of individually supporting the aspirations of their students through personal encouragement, affirmation, and social and emotional support. Understanding how academic development and learning support programs can more effectively recruit, train, support, and sustain the involvement of expert tutors is a gap in the literature. Previous literature has mainly focused on reading and mathematics tutoring and single-discipline educational approaches, rather than multidisciplinary engagement. Moreover, little discussion has occurred regarding training expert tutors to engage students in strategies, rather than simple memory-based aids.