The Embedded SWW Tutor

The paper below from 2012 includes a some results of focus groups and interviews with tutors in the SWW Program. At the time, most of the tutors were upper-division undergraduates (juniors and seniors). Some were graduate students. Here is an interesting passage from the paper about the nature of the tutor’s role:

Roles and Relationships: Tutee and Tutor Perspectives

As many of researchers and educators have observed, the relationship between peer tutor and tutee is complex, calling for what Marvin Garrett calls a “delicate balance.” Unlike tutors who are not integrated into a particular course, curriculum-based tutors such as ours have the especially arduous task of fulfilling a myriad of required roles: peer, mentor, tutor, classroom assistant, and occasionally—as when a graduate student who is both a tutor as well as a teaching assistant fills in for a teacher who is away at a conference—even as an instructor. While we are not suggesting tutor-student dynamics are always difficult, they are fragile at first; each student and each tutor approaches these new partnerings in their own way, each with different expectations. The student, in addition to wondering what the instructor will require of her, is also prompted to consider the tutor’s demands. The tutors must negotiate their relationships with peers over whom they have been placed in a position of authority, while also maintaining a relationship with the instructor who is clearly not a peer. Each paradigm calls for the need to formulate a situational understanding.

Please at least SKIM this article, paying particular attention to pp. 4-6