14th October 2010 9:00
By Blue Tutors
A key skill for tutors is to make judgements about how much to push their students, and how in-depth a tutor should go into a topic. There is always a worry that bombarding a student with new ideas could lead to the student not understanding anything, and becoming quite frustrated, but there’s also the danger of tutoring the minimum amount necessary, and leaving the student desperate for a deeper understanding of the topic.
Something that many of us will have experienced is being pushed by a tutor or a teacher, and we’re going to think about this experience. You may have felt this way at school, but it’s more likely that you felt pushed at university; taken out of your comfort zone, and really had to think carefully and work hard to get to grips with what you were being taught. Now think about how that affected your understanding and ability in that subject. It’s possible that you’re now thinking ‘it completely confused me, and did me no good’, but the common reaction is for people to realise that when pushed someone to understand more complex ideas, it actually made them far happier with the less complex ideas.
This is a common situation for undergraduates at the top universities. Tutors at those universities will generally aim very high, setting questions that they might not expect their students to complete, questions which thoroughly test someone, and aren’t straightforward in the way that many GCSE and A-level questions are. This does leave undergraduates with a feeling of incompleteness, and maybe slight frustration, and tutors are aware of this, but in trying to reach so high the student will generally achieve much more than if they were set less ambitious targets.
If a tutor aims to teach the student to a 10 then the student might achieve a 9 or a 10, but if the tutor aims for a 50, the student might only get a 20, but that’s better than a 9 or a 10.
What does this mean for you when you’re tutoring? Well it definitely doesn’t mean that you should try to tutor the most complicated idea possible, all of the time. What you should do is have faith in your students, and try to push them to be better. Don’t be satisfied with merely achieving a level that’s sufficient to get the top grade. Try to tutor so that a student is on the edge of their comfort zone. It’s a difficult balance to reach, but if you can do it the results will be brilliant.