A Critique of Pure Tutoring

A Critique of Pure Tutoring

Linda K. Shamoon and Deborah H. Burns p173-188 in the St Martin Sourcebook This article, which originally appeared in The Writing Center Journal in 1995, is important in unambiguously stating that directive tutoring, particularly when it involves discipline specific pieces of writing, is often an effective teaching strategy. -from the abstract, 173 [He responds at length to Irene Clark's Writing in the Center: Teaching in a Writing Center Setting and The Practical Tutor] Illegitimate collaboration, says Clark, creates dependency: "[T]utor dominated conferences instead of producing autonomous student writers, usually produce students who remain totally dependent upon the teacher or tutor, unlikely ever to assume responsibility for their own writing." -174 The idea that one cannot be extremely appreciative of expertise and also learn actively from an expert is an ideological formation rather than a product of research. -175 [He identifies 4 parts of the traditional tutoring view: 1. writing is a recursive process 2. process strategies are global and transferrable to any domain 3. students possess sole ownership of the text 4. 1 on 1 tutoring sessions are the best place for students to clarify their writing to themselves.] Kenneth Bruffee calls writing displaced conversation, implying that writing occurs not in isolation but in response to ideas found in other texts and other forms of communal conversation (Short Course 3). -176 [They point to student's self-reports as evidence of the value of directive tutoring. They also point to music master classes.] In fact, in "The Idea of Expertise: An Exploration of Cognitive and Social Dimensions in Writing," Michael Carter sets forth a five-stage continuum of cognitive learning that characterizes the progess from novice to expert. Carter explains that novices and advanced beginners utilize global, process-based learning and problem-solving strategies; that intermediate and advanced students shift to hierarchical and case-dependent strategies.; and that experts draw intuitively upon extensive knowledge, pattern recognition, and "holistic similarity recognition" (271-272). -178 [. . . ] during tutoring the expert provides the student with communally and historically tested options for performance and technical improvement. Also, a good deal of effort during tutoring is spent on imitation or, at its best, upon emulation. -p. 180 Three strands of research are important: research on the development of expertise (including connections to imitation and modeling) helps explain the links between directive tutoring and cognitive development; theoretical explanations of subjectivities help us understand directive tutoring and social development; theoretical explanations of subjectivities help us understand directive tutoring and social development; research on academic literacy helps us understand directive tutoring and disciplinary development. -181 The social nature of directive and emulative tutoring serves to endorse the student's worth as an emerging professional. Similarly, directive tutoring of writing presents more than a demonstration of steps in the writing process. It models a writer's attitudes, stances, and values. -184 Finally, in light of research on academic literacy, we speculate that directive tutoring lays bare crucial rhetorical processes that otherwise remain hidden or are delivered as tacit knowledge thoughtout the academy. According to Geisler, academic literacy and achievement of professionalism are tied not only to domain content and personal identity but also to mastery of rhetorical processes (88-92). These processes of reasoning, argumentation, and interpretation support a discipline's socially-constructed knowledge base. -184