Tutoring and Learning: Keeping in Step

David Wood

Learning Sciences Research Institute: University of Nottingham

My task today

• Outline tutoring theory with some illustrative evidence

• Outline research on children’s regulation of their own learning environment

• Fit together work on tutoring and learning to understand how and when these may move out of step

• Or, it takes Two to Tutor.

From scaffolding to contingent tutoring

• Engage or trap the learner in relevant activity• Focus attention by shielding from distraction• Highlight critical but neglected features of

environment and activity• Simplify by reducing scope for next action• Remind learner of previous experiences• Model through demonstration• Maintain engagement though encouragement

and feedback• Move on and forward

From scaffolding to contingent tutoring

TUTORING AS CONTINGENT SUPPORT FOR LEARNING

• INSTRUCTIONAL CONTINGENCY (HOW)

• TEMPORAL CONTINGENCY (WHEN)

• DOMAIN CONTINGENCY (WHAT)

Demonstrators, Talkers, Swingers and Angels

• Instructional Contingency

• Showing and demonstrating

• Asking and telling

• Asking then showing

• Adapt tutorial tactics in response to learner reactions

Contingent support for Learning

• Levels of helping

• 1 General verbal intervention

• 2 Specific verbal intervention

• 3 (2) plus non-verbal indicators

• 4 Prepares for next action

• 5 Demonstrates action

• Similar categories for verbal interactions

Dynamics of contingent instructional support

• Offer (more specific) help immediately in response to learner difficulties

• Offer less help after a learner accomplishment

Instructional contingency

• Overall goal: negotiate manageable challenges, and fade support as quickly as possible.

• If you could see and hear an angel, you would know an awful lot about the learner.

Assessment and Tutoring

• DYNAMIC ASSESSMENT – ANNE BROWN AND HER COLLEAGUES

» COLLABORATIVE SUCCESS PAINTS A MORE POSITIVE IMAGE OF THE LEARNER THAN AUTONOMOUS FAILURE

» THE LEARNER EXPERIENCES COLLABORATIVE SUCCESS IN PLACE OF PERSONAL FAILURE

» THE TUTOR LEARNS MORE FROM HOW MUCH HELP IS NEEDED THAN FROM ERRORS MADE

» THE LEARNER LEARNS MORE FROM COLLABORATIVE SUCCESS THAN AUTONOMOUS FAILURE

Off-line Test

scores

InteractionWithThe Tutor

OutcomesAfter

tutoring

Tutoring as Assessment

• The process of interaction between the learner and (instructionally contingent) tutor is predictive of individual differences in conventional tests of achievement.

• A knowledge of how the learner uses a contingent tutor provides a better index of learning than conventional tests of achievement.

• Contingent tutoring and dynamic assessment are two aspects of the same process.

Temporal contingency –when to intervene?

• Is timing all that important?

• One of the things that computer-based tutors can’t be programmed to do.

• Why?– What does a long pause mean?

– Is an action an error, slip or an investigation?

– Is the learner working at a (for them and now) suitable pace.

• Where temperament, mood and state fuse into the process of learning.

Driving a tutor

• What happens when we let the learner decide IF they will ask for help?

• What happens if we let the learner decide WHEN to seek help?

» E.g will they take more time before they decide to seek help that they do before making a correct move or committing an ‘error’?

Driving a tutor

• What do you expect to happen if we let the learner decide if and when to seek help?

– Help abusers?

– Help “refusers”?

• Will help seeking reflect prior knowledge?

• Will the speed of tutor-driving reflect prior knowledge?

• Will the speed of tutor-driving reflect learning gains?

Pre-testscores

Requestinghelp Learning

Gains

Prior achievement and learning with help

• Learners with more prior knowledge/higher levels of achievement

» Solicit help less often

» Receive less specific help from the tutor

» Exhibit less evidence of error and impasse

» Learn “more”

Learner-tutor interactionand learning outcomes

So, an analysis of interactions showed how individual differences were acted out in learner-tutor collaboration.

• Does it follow, then, that better learning is fast, error free and autonomous?

• Or does this only apply to better performance?

• Why is this distinction important?

• What do you think children make of it?

Collaborative interaction and learning

• Consider: we have found a clear pattern of relations between -

» Prior knowledge - interaction - outcomes

• Remove the effects of prior knowledge from the relations between learner-tutor interaction and outcomes…. and ….

Learners who learned more (after factoring out prior knowledge) -

• worked more slowly with the tutor • avoided staying locked in an impasse and error

on error by seeking help –particularly significant for the lower achieving learners

• took time to consider the demands of the problem before seeking help - particularly significant for the higher achieving learner

Tutor-driving; Seeking help

• learners with lower levels of knowledge/achievement were less likely to seek help when they were in trouble

• This has been discovered in studies of help seeking in face to face collaborative learning.

• So, does low achievement go hand in hand with weaker skills in self-regulation and less effective collaborative learning?

Tutor-driving: speed

• Lower achieving children work more slowly with the tutor

• Is this a natural phenomenon associated with a generally slow pace of working?

“Meta-cognitive” failure: But whose?

• Such findings seem to suggest that lower achievers are generally slower and less aware of their own needs for help I.e. have a ‘meta-cognitive’ problem.

• But, children who know less are being asked to solve harder problems.

• Do harder problems make it more difficult to work out when you should ask for help?

• If so, such findings could be due to a failure to offer domain contingent assessment and tutoring.

Diagnosis of source of problems

•Conceptual, mathematical problems•Procedural problems in doing sumsE.g. difficulty with notation and place value•Reading problemsProblems in relating words to mathematical symbols•Language problems•Various combinations of these factors

Domain contingency and self-regulation

• The tutor presents learners with problems matched to their current level of performance - i.e it is domain contingent

• Nearly all of the relations between prior knowledge/achievement and regulation of self and tutor disappear in this context

• Problems in self- and tutor-regulation can be detected in learners with very different levels of prior knowledge/achievement

Messages about Learning

Implicit messages about what it is to learn and know: Performance oriented testing and tutoring -

• Fosters/rewards/favours an ‘aggressive’ approach to learning, in which

• Every problem has one known, correct solution

• Good performance is fast and error free

• Being clever means never having to say you need help and support

So…?

• How do you know when to move the learner on and to encourage them to speed up? Or to slow down?

• How do we encourage a drive for competence rather than create pressure for performance?

If we have time

• How? – When? – What?

• WHAT ABOUT WHY?

• WHAT ABOUT IF?