TY - JOUR
T1 - Can tutors monitor students' understanding accurately?
AU - Chi, Michelene T.H.
AU - Siler, Stephanie A.
AU - Jeong, Heisawn
N1 - Funding Information:
Heisawn Jeong is now at Hallym University, Chun Chon, Kangwon-do, Korea. Funding for this research is provided in part by the Spencer Foundation to Michelene T. H. Chi and in part by the National Science Foundation, Grant No. NSF (LIS): 9720359, to the Center for Interdisciplinary Research on Constructive Learning Environment (CIRCLE). We are grateful for comments provided by Robert Hausmann and Kurt VanLehn.
PY - 2004
Y1 - 2004
N2 - Students learn more and gain greater understanding from one-to-one tutoring. The preferred explanation has been that the tutors' pedagogical skills are responsible for the learning gains. Pedagogical skills involve skillful execution of tactics, such as giving explanations and feedback, or selecting the appropriate problems or questions to ask the students. Skillful execution of these pedagogical skills requires that they are adaptive and tailored to the individual students' understanding. To be adaptive, the tutors must be able to monitor students' understanding accurately, so that they know how and when to deliver the explanations, feedback, and questions. Before exploring whether in fact tutoring effectiveness can be attributed to tutors' pedagogical skills, we must first ascertain the accuracy with which tutors monitor their students' understanding. This article thus investigated monitoring accuracy from both the tutors' and the students' perspectives. By coding and recoding some data collected in a previous study, the article shows that tutors could only assess students' normative understanding from the perspective of the tutors' knowledge, but tutors were dismal at diagnosing the students' alternative understanding from the perspective of the students' knowledge.
AB - Students learn more and gain greater understanding from one-to-one tutoring. The preferred explanation has been that the tutors' pedagogical skills are responsible for the learning gains. Pedagogical skills involve skillful execution of tactics, such as giving explanations and feedback, or selecting the appropriate problems or questions to ask the students. Skillful execution of these pedagogical skills requires that they are adaptive and tailored to the individual students' understanding. To be adaptive, the tutors must be able to monitor students' understanding accurately, so that they know how and when to deliver the explanations, feedback, and questions. Before exploring whether in fact tutoring effectiveness can be attributed to tutors' pedagogical skills, we must first ascertain the accuracy with which tutors monitor their students' understanding. This article thus investigated monitoring accuracy from both the tutors' and the students' perspectives. By coding and recoding some data collected in a previous study, the article shows that tutors could only assess students' normative understanding from the perspective of the tutors' knowledge, but tutors were dismal at diagnosing the students' alternative understanding from the perspective of the students' knowledge.
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U2 - 10.1207/s1532690xci2203_4
DO - 10.1207/s1532690xci2203_4
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:4444224717
SN - 0737-0008
VL - 22
SP - 363
EP - 387
JO - Cognition and Instruction
JF - Cognition and Instruction
IS - 3
ER -