14th June 2019 9:00
By Blue Tutors
When we interview tutors we spend most of the time discussing Tutoring Standards’ pedagogy with them, which is one of the nicest parts of what we do. Talking about our passion for tutoring never gets boring, and it’s so nice to see the enthusiasm from all of our new tutors.
Some tutors can’t speak more highly of the pedagogy, and obviously that’s great; it’s encouraging to see that our tutors share our teaching ideals. A few tutors have some criticisms which is understandable, particularly when tutors are experienced because they have spent so long being proud of their tutoring and have their own beliefs about the best way to teach.
What we’ve found is that criticisms of the pedagogy tend to revolve around it essentially not being specific enough. We think it’s a real strength that the pedagogy is abstract and can apply to any tutoring situation; any level; any subject. Moreover its brevity means that it’s easy to remember and can be used like a checklist with tutors asking themselves how well they performed in each go the four areas after the lesson.
It is an idealistic tutoring method where the messages of positive tutoring need to be valued and understood. Some tutors point out that “leading” can sometimes be a good thing, Devil’s Advocate for example, but the message is that leading the student to an answer rather than first asking the student for the answer has to be a bad thing.
It’s actually funny that apparent criticisms from intelligent tutors always seem to turn into a fun discussion about what the pedagogy actually means. It usually ends with everyone agreeing and feeling encouraged that the passion for high quality tuition is shared by our tutors and us.