14th January 2010 9:00
By Blue Tutors
Every tutor and student has their own ideas about what someone should or shouldn’t be teaching, and obviously it’s important that a tutor is confident and competent in the subject matter, and that the student is confident in their tutor.
An interesting fact is that tutors’ confidence in subjects seems to vary. In general higher level tuition is paid better, and therefore it’s reasonable to assume that tutors will tend to say that they can teach to a higher level than might be advisable. However, this isn’t always the case, and there are many tutors who err on the side of caution, and don’t want to teach at a level which they would be quite capable of.
So the question is: is there an objective way to decide what subjects, and at what levels a tutor can teach? The answer has to be no; every case is different, and it would be ridiculous to say that a tutor ‘should’ teach something, simply because they appear to be qualified to do it, when that tutor has no confidence in what they’re doing.
A general guideline is to teach at a level below that at which a subject has been studied to, so if someone has studied English to A-level, they can teach it to GCSE. This ensures that the tutor has knowledge and skill in a subject beyond that of the student.
However, it’s not uncommon for people to feel that they may be better a teaching a subject exactly because they haven’t studied it to a high level. This is particularly true for a subject like maths, where some tutors think that having struggled them self, they understand what it’s like to not understand something. Whether this is true or not in terms of the actual teaching is unclear, but it certainly can help if a tutor can emphasise with their student, and reassure them about the feeling of frustration that a subject like maths can create.
In summary, whether or not a tutor should be teaching a subject and level or not depends not just on the tutor’s experience and qualifications, but also on the student, and you really have to think about what the student wants and needs to decide who should teach them.