5th April 2013 9:00
By Blue Tutors
Something we’ve noticed recently is that there seems to be a real problem with tutors understanding how to set lesson goals. It’s much more of an issue than with our other teaching points, which is strange, because it’s probably the easiest. Of course, that might explain why it’s done so poorly – because so little attention is paid to setting a good lesson goal.
Most people who have tutored or taught before have a strange history of lesson goals. A popular criticism of our teaching philosophy, from experienced tutors, is that lesson goals are often implicit, and they’ve taught lots of effective lessons where no lesson goal has been stated at the start. The response is always to ask whether the lesson would have been worse if a lesson goal had been stated, and the answer is “no.......but I don’t think it was necessary”. In truth, our suspicion is that the lessons which appear to go well without a lesson goal are actually being led by the tutor much more than is ideal.
The misunderstanding about a lesson goal seems to be that the tutor can’t put him/herself in the mind of the student. Students want to know what is expected of them in that lesson, what they should be able to do by the end. However, some tutors try to explain what they (the tutor) intend to do in the lesson. The most common example is when a tutor says “today we’re going to discuss.......”. Realising that there’s no way to measure that goal, the tutor follows it up by saying “so that hopefully you will have a better understanding of........”.
A lot of tutors seem to have a real fear of stating a tangible task for the student to complete. Maybe it’s because we all love the romance associated with talking about our subject until the early hours, and we want to transfer that passion to our students without the taint of something related to school. As tutors we have to realise what our role is, and it is to ensure that a student understands a topic well, and the only way to do that with certainty is to test the student. You may still have a brilliant lesson where the student ends up talking in a deep and meaningful way about their subject, the tangible task doesn’t preclude that.
Ultimately tutors should be looking to remove themselves from a lesson as much as possible, and the easiest way to do that is to give the student a challenge, something he can get his teeth into. It’s always refreshing to be the assessor in a tutor assessment when the tutor brings an abstract problem and just lets the assessor get on with it.