Tutoring Model Research Articles

Tutoring in Canadian Adult Education Settings: A Program Overview

Herein the nature of adult learners was explored via a historical review of how tutoring systems have evolved in spite of common problems encountered in adult tutoring.   Perceptions of tutoring, and tutor training programs have been examined via the experiences of Canadian tutors working in learning support centers while offering face to face and virtual learning supports. The nature of the adult learner, in contrast to tutor training, the experiences of tutors, and tutoring supports commonly offered to adult learners was examined within a Canadian context. Recent changes in learning supports offered to adults as well as advantages and advancements in tutor programs were presented and reviewed. The evolution of the tutor model was detailed in light of technologic advancements that culminate in a discussion of what areas still need to be researched and evaluated to move tutoring into the future.

La tutoria como vehículo para el fomento de las competencias transversales en los nuevos grados de ingeniería agronómica

Los nuevos títulos de grado incorporan las competencias transversales, dedicadas a la formación en valores humanos del alumnado. Además estos nuevos títulos tienen la particularidad de tener menos horas presénciales del alumno, lo que dificulta la adquisición de estas competencias en las clases. En este trabajo se presenta algunas reflexiones de un modelo de tutoría basada en la entrevista personal y reuniones en pequeños grupos. El objetivo de este trabajo es pues mostrar las ventajas del modelo de tutoría mencionado y estudiar sus posibilidades para afianzar algunas de las competencias transversales del Espacio Europeo de Educación Superior. Este modelo se ha visto útil en el desarrollo personal y humano del alumnado, y ha servido para detectar carencias desde el punto de vista personal, académico y curricular. Además el modelo de tutoría propuesto permitirá afianzar muchas de las competencias transversales personales, sistémicas e instrumentales que son parte de los nuevos títulos de grado. Se pretende que a través del modelo propuesto, se contribuya a que el alumnado sea artífice de su particular proyecto de vida y su propia cualificación, potenciar su capacidad de pensar y de hacer crítica, desarrollar su capacidad para planificar y llevarlo a la práctica.

Nursing students' perceptions of tutorial strategies during clinical learning instruction: A descriptive study

Teaching strategies and methodology used in clinical training are varied and have different levels of outcome. A descriptive study was carried out in Italy on a convenience sample of third year students at four campuses of the Verona University, using a questionnaire divided into four sections: trainees' perception of the levels of usefulness of various teaching strategies, the levels of effectiveness, the level of supervision and the perceived complexity. 308 students compiled the questionnaire. All the tutorial strategies included were perceived as having medium to high levels of usefulness, ten out of the eleven learning strategies were found to be very useful. A medium-high level of usefulness was perceived for supervision (M 2.9±1). The two skills recorded as needing the most supervision were the management of therapy (M 3.8±1.03; Me 4) and performing nursing techniques (M 3.7±0.95; Me 4). The most complex activities were considered to be confronting an emergency situation (M 3.8±1.03) and the planning of care for a group of patients (M 3.3±0.941), and these two activities had had the least amount of supervision. A tutoring model emerged that was centred on learning by experience and with guidance.

Tutoring Ship Handling Skills: Intelligent Tutor and Expert Model in a Simulation

The goal of this project is to develop an intelligent tutoring system (ITS) for ship handling. The system employs a cognitive model of expert surface ship navigation integrated with a spoken intelligent tutor (developed by Stanford University) and a ship handling simulation system, the Conning Officer Virtual Environment (COVE). This paper describes how the expert model was developed and how it is integrated with the ITS and COVE.

Auditory Feedback and The Plasticity of Vocal Learning in Songbirds*

Songbirds and humans both rely critically on auditory feedback for learning and maintaining accurate vocalizations. During vocal learning, juvenile songbirds learn to sing by using auditory feedback to match their variable song patterns to a memorized tutor model. During song maintaining, adult songbirds monitor the integrality and accuracy of its song on-line according to auditory feedback. This form of learning requires auditory-vocal integration. The output of songs and the information of auditory feedback are integrated in some areas of the bird's brain, and then direct next vocal activity. In recent years, the lateral magnocellular nucleus of the anterior neostriatum (LMAN) has been demonstrated that it is necessary for feedback-dependent song decrystallization, and LMAN neurons exhibit highly selective responses to auditory presentation of the bird's own song (BOS). Moreover, the discovery of mirror neurons in the high vocal centre (HVC) also provides a significant clue for further study in songbirds. Here the progress of auditory feedback and the plasticity of vocal learning in songbirds are reviewed in recent years.

Identifying Essential Instructional Components of Literacy Tutoring for Struggling Beginning Readers

This study examined the components of a one-on-one literacy tutoring model to identify the necessary and sufficient elements for helping struggling beginning readers. The tutoring components of interest included word work using manipulative letters, written word work, and a generalization component. Reading assessment data from 100 first-grade students, randomly assigned to four tutoring conditions and a control group, were analyzed. Following the treatment period, groups were evaluated on phonological awareness, sight word knowledge, decoding, and word attack. Results indicated that children who received all of the tutoring components performed better than those in the control condition across all four reading performance indicators under consideration.

Workers’ Educational Association tutorial classes and citizenship in Scotland, 1907–1939

A key factor motivating the organisation of tutorial classes for adult learners, based on collaboration between the Workers’ Educational Association and universities in England and Wales, was a belief that they offered an educational vehicle for the promotion of liberal concepts of political citizenship. Attempts to disseminate this tutorial class model were not always successful, despite the promotional efforts of Albert Mansbridge and his fellow supporters. This article considers the educational and organizational characteristics of tutorial classes and makes a regional comparison of their meagre development in Scotland with their sustained growth elsewhere between 1907 and 1939. It identifies a complex weave of factors, related to both the nature of student demand and the funding of adult education, that inhibited the growth of tutorial classes in Scotland. These factors also provide insight into general barriers to the development of liberal adult education to promote citizenship in Scotland.

A tutoring model for promoting the pedagogical‐disciplinary skills of prospective teachers

This article presents a tutor‐centered tutoring model that aims to develop and establish the pedagogical‐disciplinary knowledge and skills of prospective teachers. The tutoring model and the research that accompanied its implementation are presented. The tutor‐tutee pairs worked for two five‐session cycles for two semesters, enabling prospective teachers to experience teaching situations by guiding the tutee through problem‐solving processes. The sessions were based on difficulties that arose during the tutees' learning process. The research findings focus on the evaluation of the model by its participants – tutors, tutees and program coordinator – and indicate that the main tutoring targets were achieved. This tutoring model was implemented with prospective computer science teachers; we suggest, however, that it is applicable in teacher preparation programs in other disciplines in which problem solving is inherent.

Each One Teach One

Scholars of adult basic literacy curricular materials have argued that the skill-based, deficit-oriented approach of many such materials denies the interests and motivations of adult learners. Exploring why these kinds of curricular materials are prevalent in adult basic literacy education, this article focuses on the case of ProLiteracy, a nongovernmental adult basic literacy organization that grew out of missionary Frank Laubach's work in the 1930s to convert illiterate adults to Christianity and a belief in American-style capitalism. This article argues that the legacy of Laubach's evangelism continues to affect adult literacy instruction in the United States today, through the content of many of the materials in the ProLiteracy catalogue, as well as through the volunteer-based one-to-one tutoring model's positioning of low-literacy adults.

Early Literacy Instruction and Intervention

The purpose of this paper is to describe the efficacy of early literacy interventions and to discuss possible roles for volunteer tutors in helping prevent reading difficulties within the Response to Intervention process. First, we describe a landmark study that evaluated the impact of primary classroom instruction on reducing the proportion of students at risk for reading failure, and a more recent series of studies exploring the effects of individualizing classroom reading instruction based on students' initial skills. Second, we review studies of more intensive early intervention to demonstrate how these interventions substantially reduce the proportion of students at risk. Third, we examine effective tutoring models that utilize volunteers. Finally, we discuss the potential role of community tutors in supporting primary classroom instruction and secondary interventions.

Tutor model syntax influences the syntactical and phonological structure of crystallized songs of white-crowned sparrows

Songbirds undergo a sensitive period in which exposure to adult song is necessary for normal vocal development. During this period, a template is formed and later used as a model for comparison via auditory feedback. In montane white-crowned sparrows, Zonotrichia leucophrys oriantha, whose song typically consists of four to five distinct segments (phrases), exposure to syntactically overlapping phrase pairs during the sensitive period provides the minimum sufficient information for song assembly; exposure to isolated phrases is insufficient. This suggests that a template representing phrase-pair information is sufficient for guiding normal song production. However, birds may also store and use the additional information they receive when tutored with full song. In the present study, we tutored white-crowned sparrows with a range of phrase sequence information. We found that sparrows tutored with varying levels of syntax information differed in the syntactical (phrase sequence) and phonological (phrase structure) characteristics of their final songs. Sparrows tutored with isolated phrases produced songs that were syntactically and, surprisingly, phonologically deficient. The crystallized songs of birds tutored with full song generally consisted of five phrase types, whereas those of birds tutored with phrase pairs generally had four phrase types. In addition, birds tutored with phrase pairs combined phrases from different tutors in their final songs, while birds tutored with full song did not. These results suggest that the additional syntactical information present in full song is stored and later used. Also, the ability to accurately reproduce phrase structure is linked to the availability of syntax information during the sensitive period.

Top-Down Regulation of Plasticity in the Birdsong System: “Premotor” Activity in the Nucleus HVC Predicts Song Variability Better Than It Predicts Song Features

We studied real-time changes in brain activity during active vocal learning in the zebra finch songbird. The song nucleus HVC is required for the production of learned song. To quantify the relationship of HVC activity and behavior, HVC population activity during repeated vocal sequences (motifs) was recorded and temporally aligned relative to the motif, millisecond by millisecond. Somewhat surprisingly, HVC activity did not reliably predict any vocal feature except amplitude and, to a lesser extent, entropy and pitch goodness (sound periodicity). Variance in "premotor" HVC activity did not reliably predict variance in behavior. In contrast, HVC activity inversely predicted the variance of amplitude, entropy, frequency, pitch, and FM. We reasoned that, if HVC was involved in song learning, the relationship of HVC activity to learned features would be developmentally regulated. To test this hypothesis, we compared the HVC song feature relationships in adults and juveniles in the sensorimotor "babbling" period. We found that the relationship of HVC activity to variance in FM was developmentally regulated, with the greatest difference at an HVC vocalization lag of 50 ms. Collectively, these data show that, millisecond by millisecond, bursts in HVC activity predict song stability on-line during singing, whereas decrements in HVC activity predict plasticity. These relationships between neural activity and plasticity may play a role in vocal learning in songbirds by enabling the selective stabilization of parts of the song that match a learned tutor model.

Tutoring model for promoting teaching skills of computer science prospective teachers

One of the greatest challenges Computer Science (CS) teachers face is that of guiding their pupils through problem-solving processes, i.e., the process of constructing a solution for a given problem as an algorithm or a computer program. This paper suggests a tutoring model, to be implemented by prospective CS teachers, that aims at training them to accomplish this challenge. The model is based on one-on-one tutoring sessions, in which the prospective teacher meets a novice undergraduate student taking an introductory CS course and guides him or her through problem-solving processes. The tutoring activity provides the prospective CS teachers with an opportunity to experience teaching situations, especially learners' difficulties with respect to problem-solving processes, and consequently, to improve their teaching skills. The tutoring model was integrated into the Methods of Teaching Computer Science course and was accompanied by a qualitative research. The main research findings indicate that the prospective CS teachers: (a) change their perspective with respect to teaching processes; (b) focus in their teaching on learners' difficulties; (c) increase their awareness to problem-solving processes and to the need to adapt different teaching approaches for different learners; (d) become reflective practitioners; and (e) increase their confidence with respect to teaching processes.

Feasibility and construct validity of a novel laparoscopic skills testing and training model

The apprentice–tutor model was useful for training surgeons for many years, but the complexity of surgical technology in the 21st century, especially endoscopic surgery, has exponentially increased the demands for surgical education. Therefore, more and more people now accept that endoscopic surgery, demanding as it requires specific skills, should also be taught outside the operating theatre. Although many systems, including animal models and simulators, have been proposed, an in-house structured and validated method for testing and training laparoscopic skills is missing in gynaecology. We have developed a laparoscopic skills testing and training (LASTT) model and performed two studies evaluating its feasibility and the construct validity of three different exercises (camera navigation, camera navigation and forceps handling, and forceps handling and bi-manual coordination), specifically selected to test and train laparoscopic psychomotor skills (LPS). In the first study, ten experts and 14 novices repeated each exercise between 20 and 30 times. The results demonstrated that the model is useful for testing and training laparoscopic skills. Clear learning curves were observed for both experts and novices, with better scores for the former at the beginning and the end of the study, proving the construct validity of the model. In the second study, 42 experts and 241 novices repeated each exercise three times during skill evaluation workshops organised by the European Academy of Gynaecological Surgery. The results confirmed the construct validity of the model. In conclusion, the LASTT model seems a cost-effective tool for providing an in-house program for continuous training and evaluation of LPS in all surgical disciplines in which laparoscopic procedures are, or might be, performed.

Song retuning with tutor model by adult zebra finches

Songbirds first memorize a tutor song in youth and develop their own song after the remembered model. As birds sexually mature, their song becomes crystallized and refractory to further tutoring. Here, we show that the song syllables of adult zebra finches gradually drift from their once crystallized forms, when individual birds are kept in auditory isolation or in company of cage mates singing different song syllables. Furthermore, when birds with drifted syllables are tutored with the same model again, they amend the fine structure of their syllables towards the model. In contrast, retutoring does not affect syllable sequences that differ from those of the original tutor.

Adapting Peer Tutoring for Learners Who Are Deaf or Hard of Hearing

The purpose of this article is to present a classwide peer tutoring (CWPT) model successfully implemented with children who are deaf. Classwide peer tutoring is relatively easy to implement and is both teacher- and student-friendly. A large and growing body of professional literature documents the effectiveness of systematic peer tutoring models. Systematically implemented peer tutoring systems increase academic engagement and, in most cases, increase students' acquisition, maintenance, and generalization of skills across a variety of academic content areas. The innovative use of CWPT in classrooms for students who are deaf is based on adaptations made during the dissertation research of the first author. Specifically, adaptations will be described for the process of tutor training, the creation of tutoring materials, and the implementation and monitoring of a program for individuals who are deaf or hard of hearing. Suggestions for how these adaptations can be implemented with other special needs populations are presented.

Colloquium: Light scattering by particle and hole arrays

This colloquium analyzes the interaction of light with two-dimensional periodic arrays of particles and holes. The enhanced optical transmission observed in the latter and the presence of surface modes in patterned metal surfaces are thoroughly discussed. A review of the most significant discoveries in this area is presented first. A simple tutorial model is then formulated to capture the essential physics involved in these phenomena, while allowing analytical derivations that provide deeper insight. Comparison with more elaborated calculations is offered as well. Finally, hole arrays in plasmon-supporting metals are compared to perforated perfect conductors, thus assessing the role of plasmons in these types of structures through analytical considerations.

Creating and testing a model for tutors and participants to support the collaborative construction of knowledge online

This paper describes the construction and testing of a model designed to inform contributors to online collaborative dialogues about the nature of their contribution, and to guide the input from tutors who facilitate these dialogues. In particular, the model was designed to assist reflection on learning behaviours in online dialogues by participants and by tutors. The overall goal was to generate a model to help groups construct knowledge through reflection on their own contributions—rather than to provide a means for external evaluation of individual progress. To develop the model, a participatory action research methodology was used, involving interested parties in a spiral of exploration, planning, implementation, systematic observation, reflection and then re‐planning. After clarification of the objective of the action research, a range of learning theories were reviewed; then constructs used in the evaluation of online learning were considered. From this reconnaissance, a prototype model was constructed. This was used by three groups actively involved in online collaboration. A synthesis of their evaluative feedback was made on the basis of which a further model was designed and then evaluated. This resulted in the authors' current model, which is presented and then itself tested.

Peer Tutoring in Schools: Cognitive Models and Organizational Typography

The authors define peer tutoring and describe the types of peer tutoring reported in the literature. An organizational typography of peer tutoring in school classrooms is presented, and the variables that influence patterns, nature and effectiveness of peer interaction are explored. Cognitive models of peer tutoring approaches that follow either Piagetian theories of cognitive conflict or Vygotskian theories of co-construction are compared and the similarities and differences of each model interrogated. The influences each model may have on cognitive and affective development, as well as metacognition, are illustrated. The authors discuss knowledge transfer issues to facilitate the development of effective models of peer tutoring in the classroom practice of teachers in schools. Finally, areas for future research and development are highlighted.

Perceived Usefulness of Reciprocal Peer Teaching Among Doctor of Physical Therapy Students in the Gross Anatomy Laboratory

Background and Purpose. Reciprocal peer teaching (RPT) describes an education method whereby students alternate between teacher and student roles. The use of RPT has not been described in previous physical therapist education literature. The first purpose of this study was to assess the perceived usefulness of RPT among first-year Doctor of Physical Therapy (DPT) students as a method for teaching and learning human anatomical relationships in the dissection laboratory. The second purpose was to determine if exposure to RPT during a semester course in gross anatomy had an effect on students' anatomy course grade. Subjects. Participants were 27 professional (entry-level) DPT students, graduating class of 2008, who participated in the RPT experience in the gross anatomy laboratory, and 21 DPT students, graduating class of 2007, who did not participate in the RPT experience. Methods. Students in teacher roles worked in pairs and rotated among their fellow classmates within the laboratory, illustrating anatomical concepts previously discussed in the classroom. At the completion of the course, students were queried about the perceived usefulness of the RPT experience using a 12-item survey instrument that used a 5-point Likert scale. The internal consistency of the survey instrument was estimated by Cronbach's alpha. The median anatomy course grade (MACG) for the class of 2008 and class of 2007 was compared statistically using a Mann-Whitney U-test. Results. Cronbach's alpha was 0.85. Students provided the strongest responses for survey items that assessed the perceived usefulness of RPT for teaching and learning anatomical relationships (median Likert scores ranged from 4 to 5). MACG for the class of 2008 (MACG = 3.70) was significantly greater than the MACG for the class of 2007 (MACG = 3.30; Z = 2.19, P = .029). Discussion and Conclusion. First-year DPT students perceived the usefulness of RPT in the dissection laboratory as a valuable resource for teaching and learning anatomical concepts. In addition, the RPT experience was also perceived to be helpful when communicating with patients. Furthermore, exposure to RPT had a significant effect on the MACG. Key Words: Physical therapist education, Reciprocal peer teaching, Peer teaching, Physical therapist students. INTRODUCTION The historical origins of peer tutoring or teaching in Western civilization date back to Greece in the first century AD. Peer teaching eventually spread to Rome, Germany, and other European countries before it reached America.1 In the strictest sense, peer tutoring dents and approximately the same age. A primary reason posited for the effectiveness of one-on-one peer teaching is that tutors and tutees speak similarly than do teachers and students.2 The success of peer teaching in the health sciences was reported by Walker-Bartnick et al3 who described a tutoring model for the basic science courses in medical school. The investigators used a one-to-one tutor-rutee model, and only students having academic difficulty were eligible to receive peer teaching. Lake provided the first evidence of the effectiveness of group peer teaching in college-level courses when he described the enhancement of physical therapist (PT) student performance in a gross anatomy class.4 Several fifth-year PT students who had previously completed a gross anatomy course were selected by the PT program's faculty to provide 7-weekly tutoring sessions over a 10-week academic quarter to third-year PT students currently enrolled in the gross anatomy course. Lake used both academic performance and perceived value of peer teaching to assess the effectiveness of the peer-teaching system. Compared to untutored students, tutored students demonstrated a smaller decline (P