Tutoring entails tailoring the selection, sequencing, and methods of delivering instruction to meet the needs of the tutee. The problem of developing curricula and instruction for tutoring is therefore, in selecting and sequencing material and methods for presenting the material.
Campbell states that “most approaches to instruction are based on an unspoken “blank slate” assumption. Thus, those students who cannot perform a particular task are viewd as lacking the skill or missing the fact. Although this may be true in some cases, there may well be others in which students possess all the wrong skills or all too much knowledge.
There are various instructional tools used by tutors. Some tutors prefer teaching their students through a body of factual knowledge and the skills required to draw what is called “first-order inferences” from that knowledge, relying so much on declarative knowledge. Tutors who uses this kind of instructional tool are called expository tutors. Their primary concern is on the factual knowledge and inferential skills.
Some tutors, on the other hand, teach skills and procedures. Tutors of this genre are concerned with the procedures that operate on memory. They are called procedure tutors. As a result, they function much more like coaches. “They present examples to exhibit problem-solving skills, and they pose exercises for purposes of testing practice,” (Foundations of Intelligent Tutoring Systems, 83).
The above is a small excerpt from the 25 PLR articles on How To Be A Good Tutor.
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