Running Head: CONCEPTIONS OF BEING A GOOD TUTOR 1

Conceptions of being a good tutor in higher education: Survey of tutors at Penn States
Morgan Center



Paul Andrade
HIED 546 College Teaching
Dr. Kathy Jackson
June 26, 2014



CONCEPTIONS OF BEING A GOOD TUTOR 2

Conceptions of being a good tutor in higher education

Peer tutors are utilized in higher education as inexpensive academic support for students
seeking help in classes that the tutors have been recently successful in. As such, they may be
undergraduates themselves and still in the process of developing their own knowledge in the
subject matter as students in higher level courses related to the ones they tutor. Peer-tutors,
themselves, may most likely not be trained in teaching and learning theories. They may acquire
their conceptions of good tutoring on the job through experience. Peer tutors may also be
steered by personal conceptions that have been shaped by epistemological beliefs of teaching
prevalent in the discipline of the material being taught (Lindblom-Yianne, Trigwell, Nevgi, &
Ashwin, 2006). Jelfs, Richardson, and Price (2009) through factor analysis of an administered
survey at the Open University in the United Kingdom revealed factors corresponding to
conceptual beliefs of what it means to a good tutor held by online tutors at that institution.
This study reported the following six factors that influenced online tutors beliefs about good
tutoring: Active Learning, Transmitting Knowledge, Subject Expertise, Pastoral Care,
Vocational Guidance, Supporting Learning (Jelfs, et al., 2009, p. 430). It is conceivable that
these factors may also play a role in influencing the beliefs about good tutoring held by tutors
on a traditional residential campus in the United States. Research on teaching and learning has
suggested that a student and learning centered emphasis leads to deeper learning outcomes than
does a teacher or content-coverage focused approach (Trigwell, Prosser, & Waterhouse, 1999).
Several lines of research support a student-centered approach in increasing student retention,
persistence and graduation rates (Pascarella & Terenzini, 2005). Academic support centers that
offer peer tutoring are becoming commonplace on American campuses, an assessment of a
CONCEPTIONS OF BEING A GOOD TUTOR 3

tutors conceptual beliefs about good tutoring may help assist in targeted training and
development of tutor practices leading to more efficient tutoring practices.
The purpose of this study aimed to uncover tutors conceptions of what a good tutor
is/does, to categorize tutors according to their conceptions, and to gauge how those conceptions
may be related to experience. Tutors employed by the Morgan Academic Support Center for
Student Athletes were surveyed about their beliefs concerning the characteristics of a good
tutor, categorized by a broad discipline classification, STEM and non-STEM, according to five
of the six concepts reported by Jelfs et al. (2009). Additionally, tutors conceptual responses were
compared to self-reported tutoring experience times.
Literature review
Topping (1996) defined peer tutoring as people from similar social groupings who are
not professional teachers helping each other to learn and learning themselves from teaching (p.
322). Roscoe and Chi (2007) refine the definition to mean the recruitment of one student to
provide one-on-one instruction for another student, accompanied by explicit assignment of
participants to tutor and tutee roles with the tutor being more advanced in general (p. 535).
The role of the tutor can be considered to be multifaceted. In addition to teaching a subject and
helping to develop effective independent studying strategies, tutors may have an impact on the
integration of the student to college life (Jelfs et al., 2009). Retention of students, especially
from the first to the second year of college, has been suggested to be to be affected by both
academic support and student-life integration (Jelfs, et al., 2009; Pascarella & Terenzini, 2005).
The teaching strategies utilized by tutors may vary and may be affected by opposing
orientations. Trigwell and Prosser (1993) described five approaches to teaching that could be
distinguished into teacher-centered and student-centered practices. Norton, Richardson, Hartley,
CONCEPTIONS OF BEING A GOOD TUTOR 4

Newstead, & Mayes (2005) reported that both the beliefs and the intentions of teachers can
reflect this dichotomy. It was reported that learning activities like problem solving, although
believed to be student-centered, were actually more teacher-centered with intent on knowledge
transmission (Norton et al., 2005). Extrapolating from this study, it may be surmised that while
tutors believe that a student centered approach is most effective, their teaching intentions in a
tutoring session may skew towards a teacher-centered approach. Interestingly, it may be that
students have a part in this conflict as it has been shown that students themselves favor a student-
centered classroom, but prefer clarity of subject content and a well-structured, interesting
presentation of material (Hativa & Birenbaum, 2000). The notion that a student-centered,
learning facilitation approach is effective in developing deeper knowledge is supported by
evidence in the literature (Trigwell, Prosser, & Waterhouse, 1999).
Learning facilitation and knowledge transmission are two orientations also observed in
academic tutoring that can affect tutee learning as well as tutor learning. Roscoe and Chi (2007),
from a cognitive perspective, reported that while tutoring activities support learning (in the tutor)
through reflective knowledge building, which includes self-monitoring of comprehension,
integration of new and prior knowledge, and elaboration and construction of knowledge, peer-
tutors tend to focus on delivering knowledge/content rather than developing knowledge/content in
their students (p. 534).
Jelfs et al. (2006) carried out surveys (adapted from Gow & Kember, 1993) of both tutors
and students designed to assess the factors which may affect teacher-centered or student-centered
orientations. The authors reported six factors that could influence orientation in tutors teaching
styles: Active Learning, Subject Expertise, Supporting Learning, Transmitting Knowledge,
Vocational Guidance, and Pastoral Care (Jelfs et al., 2006). The questions in the questionnaire
CONCEPTIONS OF BEING A GOOD TUTOR 5

were designed to assess levels of agreement with statements related to one of the factors from
which orientation could be discerned. While not explicitly stated in the article, Active Learning,
Supporting Learning, and Vocational Guidance were inferred to be factors influencing a student-
centered environment, while Transmitting Knowledge and Subject Expertise denoted a teacher-
centered orientation. The Pastoral Care factor seemed ambiguous. It was found that these
factors may be attribute different levels of influence in different types of tutors according to their
discipline.
Methods
A five point Likert scale (strongly disagree, disagree, neither agree nor disagree, agree,
strongly agree) survey instrument asked respondents to indicate their level of agreement or
disagreement with statements about being a good tutor or what good tutoring is. The
questionnaire consisted of 20 questions (see Appendix) taken from a 51-question survey reported
by Jelfs et al. (2009) and was used to collect information about the conceptual beliefs that tutors
from various disciplines at Penn States Morgan Academic Support Center for Student Athletes
held about being a good tutor. The specific questions used were shown to be important in the
factor analysis of tutors responses in that study (Jelfs et al., 2009). Two additional questions
were asked at the beginning of the survey. One asking for the subject/course that the tutor related
to most while answering the survey questions, and the second asking for an estimate of how long
the tutor had been tutoring in his/her lifetime.
After consultation with the tutor supervisor, it was believed that a shorter survey
incorporating several questions that Jelfs et al. (2009) reported as contributing to the factor
analysis would be sufficient for maximum response rate over the short administration period.
Sixteen of the survey questions were identified as important to the factor analysis by Jelfs et al.
CONCEPTIONS OF BEING A GOOD TUTOR 6

(2009), four of the questions were used as filler but may provide insight to the conceptual
beliefs of this particular sample of tutors.
The Morgan Center was utilized because of my professional relationship with the Senior
Learning Specialist and Tutor/Mentor Coordinator who was instrumental in distributing the
survey to current tutors. The survey as a Google Form was sent by email to current Morgan
Center tutors on June 15, 2014 and responses were collected for 10 days after which the survey
was closed to further responses. No personal information was required and the responses
received were completely anonymous.
Descriptive statistics utilizing percentages denoting the amount of responses that scored
high on the scale were used due to the small sample.
Results
Survey data was collected was from 18 tutor responses (29% response rate). All but one
of the respondents provided the name or description of the subject taught. This respondents
results were not considered in the analysis of the data classifying tutors according to their
specialties, but was utilized in the aggregated general combined analysis. Out of the eighteen
participants that did divulge course information, twelve responded that they tutored in subjects
related to the STEM fields, four in humanities or social science based courses, and one in a
business oriented course. For the purposes of this study tutors in the humanities and social
sciences and the tutor in business were categorized together as Non-STEM tutors. The
subjects taught, the number of participants, and the ranges of tutoring experience are shown in
Table 1.

Table 1. Self-reported data of the four subject areas, with representative subjects, of the survey
participants and the range of tutoring experience in each area.
CONCEPTIONS OF BEING A GOOD TUTOR 7

Subject Areas Number of
Participants
Range of tutoring
experience
STEM
Statistics, Math, Chemistry,
Biology
12 5 months to 25 years
Humanities & Social Sciences
English, Spanish, Political
Science, Criminology
4 1-23 years
Business
Management
1 3 years
Undeclared 1 1 year


Tutor responses were categorized according to five of Jelfs et al.s (2009) conceptual
classifications. These categories were labeled Active Learning, Subject Expertise, Supporting
Learning, Transmitting Knowledge, and Vocational Guidance. Table 2 indicates levels of
agreement or strong agreement with the statements related to the conceptual beliefs about good
tutoring from STEM tutors, Non-STEM tutors, and all tutors surveyed.
Overall, tutors responses were more favorable towards beliefs that good tutoring resulted
from Active Learning (95.4% of responses agreed/strongly agreed with statements in this
category) and Supporting Learning (100% of responses agreed/strongly agreed with statements
in this category) conceptual practices. Response favorable to Transmitting Knowledge
statements were found for 85.2% of all tutors responses. The lowest favorability scores for all
the respondents were apparent in statements concerning Subject Expertise (68.5%) and
Vocational Guidance (66.7%)
The results show that STEM tutors favored beliefs related to Active Learning (95% of
responses agree/strongly agree) and Supporting Learning (100% of responses agree/ strongly
agree) as influencing good tutoring habits. Non-STEM tutors also favored Active Learning
(100% of responses agree/strongly agree) and Supporting Learning (100% of responses
agree/strongly agree) beliefs but additionally that Transmitting Knowledge (93.3% of responses
CONCEPTIONS OF BEING A GOOD TUTOR 8

agreed/strongly agreed) was important to good tutoring. In comparison, 83% of responses of
STEM tutors agreed/strongly agreed with statements about knowledge transmission as being
essential for good tutoring.
The lowest response agreement scores were evident among both STEM and Non-STEM
tutors in the categories of Subject Expertise (STEM - 66.7% of responses agreed/strongly agreed
with statements in this category, Non-STEM 80% of responses agreed/strongly agreed in this
category) and Vocational Guidance (STEM 66.7% of responses agreed/strongly agreed with
statements in this category, Non-STEM 80% of responses agreed/strongly agreed in this
category)
Table 2. Comparison of percentage of responses that Agreed/Strongly Agreed with statements in
each category between STEM tutor responses, Non-STEM tutor responses, and Combined
tutor responses with statements in each category
Category STEM Tutor %
of Responses
Non-STEM tutor %
Responses
All tutor %
Responses
Combined*
Active Learning 95 100 95.4
Subject Expertise 66.7 80 68.5
Supporting Learning 100 100 100
Transmitting Knowledge 83 93.3 85.2
Vocational Guidance 66.7 80 66.7
*Combined percentages include responses from an individual who didnt specify the area of
tutoring.


Table 3 explicitly shows the response percentages for statements in each category
according to subject area taught and lifetime experience as a tutor. For STEM tutors, the ranges
CONCEPTIONS OF BEING A GOOD TUTOR 9

were divide into 0-3 years, 4-5 years, and 10-25 years. For Non-STEM tutors the ranges were
divided into 1-3 years and 25 years.
Table 3. Relationship of tutors experiences with their conceptions of good tutoring as measured
by each tutors responses that agreed or strongly agreed to the survey questions in each category.
Conceptual Category STEM tutors
experience
Non-STEM tutors
experience

0-3 years
(n=8)
4-5 years
(n=2)
10-25 years
(n=2)
1-3 years
(n=4)
23 years
(n=1)
Active Learning
Strongly agree 75% 50% 83.3% 79.1% 33.3%
Agree 20.8% 33.3% 16.7% 20.9% 66.6%
Neither agree nor
disagree
2.1% 16.7% 0% 0% 0%
Disagree 2.1% 0% 0% 0% 0%
Strongly disagree 0% 0% 0% 0% 0%
Subject Expertise
Strongly agree 29.2% 16.7% 66.7% 58.3% 33.3%
Agree 45.8% 16.7% 16.7% 16.7% 66.7%
Neither agree nor
disagree
20.8% 66.7% 16.7% 16.7% 0%
Disagree 4.2% 0% 0% 8.3% 0%
Strongly disagree 0% 0% 0% 0% 0%
Supporting Learning
Strongly agree 100% 75% 100% 100% 100%
Agree 0% 25% 0% 0% 0%
Neither agree nor
disagree
0% 0% 0% 0% 0%
Disagree 0% 0% 0% 0% 0%
Strongly disagree 0% 0% 0% 0% 0%
Knowledge Transmission
Strongly agree 54.2% 0% 33.3% 60% 0%
Agree 37.5% 50% 50% 33.3% 100%
Neither agree nor
disagree
4.2% 50% 16.7% 6.7% 0%
Disagree 4.2% 0% 0% 0% 0%
Strongly disagree 0% 0% 0% 0% 0%
Vocational Guidance
Strongly agree 37.5% 0% 50% 50% 0%
Agree 37.5% 50% 0% 25% 100%
Neither agree nor
disagree
25% 50% 0% 0% 0%
Disagree 0% 0% 50% 25% 0%
Strongly disagree 0% 0% 0% 0% 0%
CONCEPTIONS OF BEING A GOOD TUTOR 10

Discussion
This inquiry project served to gain some perspective into the beliefs that tutors hold that
may influence their tutoring practices. The instrument used served to probe the conceptual
beliefs of tutors working at the Morgan Center at Penn State in the first summer session of 2014.
Questions that were examined were as follows:
1. What beliefs influence tutors idea of what a good tutor is?
2. Can tutors at Penn States Morgan Center be categorized according to their
conceptions about good tutoring?
3. Is there a relationship between these conceptions and the relevant subject disciplines
being tutored?
4. Are these conceptions related to how long a tutor has been tutoring in his/her lifetime?
According to the results of the questionnaire, it is not believed that a consistent and accurate
representation cannot be confidently manufactured. However, the responses received provide
some insight to at least a handful of tutors at Penn State.
In regards to the first question, it was seen that Jelfs et al.s (2009) survey provided an
instrument to gauge which conceptions about good tutoring were held by Morgan Center tutors
from several subject areas in STEM and non-STEM. However, inferences about how these
beliefs influence tutoring practices must be further investigated through empirical and qualitative
studies.
The second question narrows the lens by asking if tutors at Penn State can be placed
within categories according to manner in which they responded to questions relevant to five
conceptual beliefs about good tutoring (See Table 1). Similar to the first question, the lack of
participation incurs serious limitations. However, the small sample of respondents grouped
CONCEPTIONS OF BEING A GOOD TUTOR 11

pretty well into categories that may favorably contribute to more efficient student learning
through peer tutoring. Using simple descriptive data analysis, it was found that this sample of
Morgan Center tutors overwhelmingly favored concepts of good tutoring resulting from Active
Learning and Supporting Learning beliefs. This could be related to recent emphasis on social
constructivist theories, like Vygotskys sociocultural learning theory (Vygotsky, 1978) and to
Rogoffs (1990) apprenticeship in thinking notion in which effective learning is an outcome of
encouraging environments and must engage the learner with respect to context instead of relying
on passive transmission techniques like lectures and such. A belief that may be significantly
favored by Morgan Center tutors in influencing good tutoring was found to be the Transmitting
Knowledge concept. Although this may seem to be a passive technique that may be perceived to
deter effective student learning, it may be the case that Morgan Center tutors believe a balance
must be struck between active and passive tutoring techniques. Another rational for the
popularity of this concept may be that tutors themselves were socialized to believe that the
lecture or answering giving techniques were perceived to be effective in their own
learning/college experience. Such a perception may be the result of the epistemological beliefs
of a tutors discipline and the subject they teach. The ambiguity about the possible relationship
of discipline to good tutoring concepts is the focus of the third question in this study. Finally, the
questionnaire may have revealed that Morgan Center tutors believe that beliefs relating to
Subject Expertise and Vocational Guidance had some effect, but less than the other factors on
their beliefs about good tutoring.
To investigate the existence of a possible relationship between tutors perceptions of what
a good tutor is and their stated area of tutoring (grouped into STEM and non-STEM), the
percentages of responses concerned with each conceptual belief that scored high on the scale
CONCEPTIONS OF BEING A GOOD TUTOR 12

were tabulated (See Table 2). Some differences between subject area type are immediately
discernable. Given the percentage of high scale scores (>95%) in the analysis of the respondents
taken as a whole, it is not unexpected that both Active Learning and Supporting Learning
concepts are held in high regard by both subsets of tutors. However, with regards to the belief
that Transmitting Knowledge is effective in tutoring, the analysis shows that non-STEM tutors
value this belief more than do STEM tutors. This may be a puzzling finding in that it would be
expected that STEM students, given the perceived emphasis on memorization and lecturing
styles, would favor this concept more than non-STEM tutors. It should be clearly acknowledged
that the sample size precludes any inferential conclusions, as there were significantly less non-
STEM tutors that responded, but the result provides an interesting question in need of answering
at Penn State by further and more robust data collection. Along the same lines as the previous
observation, the data shows that non-STEM tutors responded more favorably to statements
concerned with Subject Expertise and Vocational Guidance. As with the previous observation,
nothing can be concluded with confidence about this result, only that more data needs to be
collected. Research has shown that high scores in the supporting learning category is consistent
with a student-oriented conception of tutoring, while high scores evident in the transmitting
knowledge category indicate a knowledge oriented conception. Interestingly, tutors from the
humanities and business did perceive these to be important suggesting that knowledge
transmission is more important than knowledge development for these tutors.
The final question makes an attempt to correlate experience with Morgan Center tutors
beliefs about good tutoring. Table 3 organizes responses according to ranges of years tutoring in
a tutors lifetime. It could be expected that the more experienced a tutor, the more he/she favors
beliefs that produce successful learning outcomes. The data collected suffers from a lack of
CONCEPTIONS OF BEING A GOOD TUTOR 13

participation (STEM tutors, n=12; non-STEM tutors, n=5) and so any analysis of the data will
not stand up to scrutiny. With that disclaimer, some superficial trends that resolve earlier
observations about tutors concepts can be highlighted. In the STEM subgroup, responses
concerned with Active Learning among the less experienced tutors were more varied than all age
ranges in both STEM and non-STEM tutors. Furthermore, non-STEM inexperienced tutors
favored this particular belief more than STEM tutors. This may correlate with the notion that
STEM subjects may require or are encouraging of less active learning methods that rely on
perceived ability in the subject instead of engaging activities. It may also reflect the idea in less
experienced tutors, who may have recently completed the class that foundational knowledge in
the STEM fields needs to be learned first before building on the knowledge and applying it to
real-world situations, whereas non-STEM tutors favor a constructing knowledge through
engaging activities. Taking a look at responses from tutors that have ten or more years of
experience (n=1 for non-STEM), it can be noted that they have a favorable attitude towards
Active Learning perhaps owing to their experience in the subject matter and reflection upon
strategies taken with previous students.
Another trend observed in both subgroups suggested that inexperienced did not rely on
concepts about being a good tutor being related to Subject Expertise as much as the more
experienced tutors did. This could lead one to argue that younger tutors are answering with a
bias towards their relative knowledge base in their field and that older tutors are also biased
towards their expert status. This may be the case, however, the observation is complicated by
non-STEM tutor results. Younger non-STEM tutors responded at the highest end of the scale
than did the the more experienced non-STEM tutors, although the inexperienced tutors showed
more diversity on the scale of agreement.
CONCEPTIONS OF BEING A GOOD TUTOR 14

Knowledge transmission results presented another curious finding in comparing the
subgroups of tutors. Within the STEM subgroup, inexperienced tutors were more likely to value
transmission than did the more experienced tutors. This result seems reasonable with the
assumption that tutors may develop better tutoring beliefs, less reliance on passive pedagogies
that emphasize content over the learning process, as they gain in experience. For non-STEM
tutors, this observation was reversed. The more experienced category seemed to value the
concept of Knowledge Transmission as important to good tutoring, while there was a little more
variance in the responses given by the less experienced non-STEM tutors. This results begs for
more data to be collected to ascertain whether this a real effect or if it is completely wrong due to
the sample size. Conventional wisdom may lead one to believe that non-STEM tutors would not
value Knowledge Transmission in teaching.
Conclusion
A study has been conducted that sought to answer questions about the beliefs of effective
tutoring and if these beliefs are connected to discipline of the subject being tutored and/or the
amount of experience a tutor has. Concrete data analysis could not be pursued due to the low
number of responses received in the relatively short administration period. However, some
interesting observations of Penn State Morgan Center tutors came about that may signal the need
for a more in depth and robust study to be conducted in the future. Further studies may be
developed to include comparing students and tutors conceptions of tutoring through measures
of tutor effectiveness and measures of student performance and/or satisfaction. More studies
gauging the relationships between disciplines and how they influence tutors beliefs about
effective tutoring could yield further insight into the preliminary results of this study.
CONCEPTIONS OF BEING A GOOD TUTOR 15

References
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CONCEPTIONS OF BEING A GOOD TUTOR 16

Research, 77(4), pp. 534-574. Retrieved from
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Appendix

Questionnaire sent out to active Morgan Center Tutors at Penn State in June 2014. Questions are
labeled by Conception category.
Active
Learning
A good tutor is able to enthuse students.
A good tutor encourages students to ask questions.
A good tutor facilitates learning.
A good tutor provides an environment for the students to learn.
An good tutor encourages independent learning.
A good tutor cultivates critical thinking.
Subject
Expertise
A good tutor knows their subject area very well.
A good tutor is an expert in their subject.
A good tutor keeps abreast of their field of knowledge.
Supporting
Learning
A good tutor guides students in the process of learning so that they actually
learn instead of just memorizing.
A good tutor helps students to analyze a situation and display logical and
rational thinking.
Transmitting
knowledge
A good tutor passes on what they know to the students.
A good tutor imparts information to their students.
Good tutoring is the transmission of knowledge.
Vocational
Guidance
A good tutor prepares students for their future roles.
Filler
Questions
A good tutor encourages lifelong learning.
A good tutor makes a real effort to understand the difficulties that students
may be having with their work.
A good tutor helps students engage in learning through problem solving
rather than learning through memorization.
CONCEPTIONS OF BEING A GOOD TUTOR 18

A good tutor spends less time giving information and more time engaging in
discussion.
A good tutor develops students into self-motivated learners.