The tutor-student instructional interaction

Tutors who provide remedial language training to learning-disabled adolescents analyzed videotapes of over one-hundred tutorial sessions, using a protocol which they developed to facilitate recording their observations. The tutors’ purpose was not to conduct a controlled research study; but, rather, to observe closely in order to gain understandings about the interpersonal interactions between tutor and student which might result in improved instruction. As a result of this process, they identified factors—in the structure of the setting, in the use of routinized procedures, and in the manner and approach of the tutors—which both significantly affected the students’ learning and were common to almost every interaction. They also identified patterns of behavior which students characteristically showed in their responses to certain learning situations.