28th July 2011 9:00
By Blue Tutors
If you’re reading this article then it’s likely that you’ll know a little about Blue Tutors, and those who know a little tend to know about our teaching ideas, and our assessment system. The comment we hear all the time from new tutors is: “I was attracted to work for Blue Tutors because they appear to value genuine teaching ability much more than other tuition agencies.”
It has been a long process to establish our teaching ideas, and develop an assessment that accurately tests a tutor’s skill with them. One of the major benefits as been the reaction to the results of an assessment. We feel that tutors used to be slightly dismissive of our ideas; they would see our feedback on their teaching as subjective, and think that our opinion might be valuable, but also only an opinion, and not something which they should necessarily take notice of. However, because our teaching guidelines are now so clear, and because we have a completely objective assessment based on those teaching guidelines, the feeling of ‘it’s only an opinion’ has changed.
We found now that it’s incredibly unusual for tutors to question the results of their assessment, or even disagree with any small part of our feedback. It’s clearly stated that we want tutors to teach in the way we prescribe, and if one resolves to do that, there’s no room for disagreement. Obviously someone may disagree with our teaching ideas, which is unusual (they’re practically universally praised), but if a tutor doesn’t want to teach using them then they simply don’t apply to us.
There is an issue which causes friction though, and while it happens so rarely now (roughly twice a year), it’s a very delicate situation. The issue is when an experienced and confident tutor applies to us, reads our guidelines, prepares his/her lesson and is then told that his/her teaching skills are not up the standard required. There are typically two ways that someone in this situation reacts: either determination to improve and thanks to us for a detailed assessment, or arrogance about their own ability and irrational arguments to claim that we are wrong. Of course, we can’t be wrong, the teaching guidelines are ours, and the assessment is objective, the only possibility of error is if the assessor made a mistake, which is very rare. In the latter case the tutor usually claims that our teaching guidelines are wrong, and that we’re not fit to judge them, which obviously appears to be simply a reaction to the result of their assessment, and not a genuine feeling (we ask everyone to give feedback on their assessment before receiving the results to avoid this, but no-one who complains ever does give feedback before the result).
These few cases are very disappointing for us. We understand that’s it’s a difficult thing to be told that we don’t think you’re a good tutor when you believe that you are. Our whole system is set up to try and convey this message tactfully and constructively – we want tutors to stay with us and continually improve, because we’re the best people to help them do it. The sad fact is that a few of these tutors will dismiss our advice and continue to ply their trade, emphasising experience over genuine teaching skill.