Grounding the Science of Tutoring: Insights from Laurence Holt

Laurence Holt 's "The Science of Tutoring" offers a deep dive into the design features that make tutoring approaches effective. Rejecting the asumption that tutor's subject-matter expertise or training is the primary lever for success, Holt (a senior advisor at XQ Institute ) explores what makes some tutors excel and whether this can be taught and refined. He emphasizes that the quality of tutor-tutee interactions is paramount, focusing on fostering active engagement and critical thinking.

Tutoring's resurgence is driven in part by dissatisfaction with one-sized-fits-all schooling, the need to keep learners academically on track, and recognition of individual differences. Evidence shows that tutoring significantly enhances understanding, motivation, and efficiency in learners. Holt’s book, supported by extensive research and well-crafted real-world examples, identifies key "moves" tutors use, such as explanations, questions, and feedback, stressing the importance of timing and context.

As co-founder, former principal, and former superintendent at Brooklyn LAB, I was responsible for the design, affordances, and delivery of over half a million tutoring sessoins. I appreciate the orientation Holt brings about the importance of grounding the design, iteration, and improvement of tutoring approaches in relevant sciences of learning.

Explanations and Their Limits

Holt is emphatic that tutors should talk less and ask more. Explanations often inadvertantly consume session time without yielding meaningful learning. Unsolicited tutor explanations, especially at the start, can be ineffective and waste time. The right moment for an explanation is when the learner, not the tutor, is ready. Micki Chi from Arizona State University found that using "content-free" prompts, such as “What’s going on here?” and “Could you put that in your own words?” makes sessions more interactive, with learners doing more of the work. Tutors should encourage learners to make their thinking visible.?

Paul Vedder suggests making explanations effective by having learners apply new knowledge immediately. This helps reinforce memory and identifies misunderstandings.

Building Scaffolding for Learning

Holt centers variations of scaffolded learning, where tutors provide temporary support to help learners understand and gradually remove it as learners become competent. This method fosters independence and confidence, allowing learners to tackle complex problems over time. Holt emphasizes productive struggle, where learners wrestle with challenging concepts and applications, practicing problem-solving skills and gaining comprehension. Researchers like Manu Kapur suggest that struggling before instruction leads to better retention.

Micki Chi discovered that self-explanation, having learners pause and explain what they just read, increases retention. Chi also highlights the value of tutors providing guided prompts that push learners further. The tutor directs, and the learner is in the spotlight, doing more cognitive work. Chi lists several scaffolding moves, including:

- Pumping for more (“What else?”)

- Hinting (“So, it’s kind of leaving out the lungs there?”)

- Highlighting critical features, noting discrepancies?

- Decomposing tasks to reduce complexity

- Describing problems to orient learners to key features

- Maintaining focus by recognizing progress

- Asking leading questions (“And where do you think it goes?”)

- Redirecting learners?

- Providing examples

The goal of scaffolding is to help learners achieve more than they might alone. Psychologist Lev Vygotsky called this the zone of proximal development (ZPD). In this zone, learners can achieve tasks they couldn't independently. As learners stabilize, scaffolding is gradually removed, leaving them able to perform the new skill unaided.

Balancing Surface & Deep Learning

Holt explores the differences between surface and deep learning. Surface learning, which involves simply remembering information, is easiest to achieve. However, deep learning, which entails understanding, connecting information, making predictions, and solving problems, is more challenging and requires targeted efforts by tutors. Holt underscores that deep learning demands strategic interventions that encourage deeper comprehension and problem-solving skills. In summary, surface learning is easy to obtain but limited, whereas deep learning requires significant, targeted efforts to achieve comprehensive understanding and problem-solving ability.

Providing Feedback

John Hattie’s Visible Learning meta-analysis project consistently highlights feedback as one of the most effective educational tools. Holt underscores that while tutoring can lead to both surface and deep learning, the latter is especially challenging and requires strategic, personalized interventions. Feedback is crucial in this process, and it’s essential to balance the amount and timing to avoid creating dependency while maximizing learning. Effective tutoring involves prompting and immediate feedback rather than relying heavily on direct instruction. By using targeted questions and offering constructive feedback, tutors guide learners to discover answers independently, fostering a deeper and more enduring understanding of the material.

Checking for Understanding

Genuine assessments of understanding are inherently human endeavors. Deep evaluation involves discerning the unique reasons behind a learnert's response. The aim is not just to cover the material but to uncover insights into the learner’s thought process and identify areas for growth and advancement.

Putting all the Pieces Together

We've reviewed certain key tutoring techniques: explanations (not very effective), scaffolding (good for surface learning), feedback (effective but challenging for deep learning), and checks for understanding (easy for surface, difficult for deep). There's a significant opportunity to enhance what tutors and tutoring can achieve.

A tutor-tutee relationship that lasts several weeks or months should focus on building trust and understanding the tutee's interests. A tutee who trusts their tutor is more willing to take risks and embrace challenges.

Surface learning has its value, but reaching expert levels in any topic requires deep learning. This necessitates identifying the tutor strategies that reliably foster depth. The tutor's main contribution may not be their content knowledge but their ability to engage learners in sustained, meaningful ways.

Shifting focus from tutor actions to learner actions reveals signs of deep learning: forming hypotheses, making predictions, drawing analogies, generating justifications, critiquing, and reconciling conflicting information. Deep learning involves connecting new knowledge to what the learner already knows, which enhances retention and understanding.

Making Space for Silence and Confusion

Tackling problems before being given the tools to solve them can, Holt writes, initially seems frustrating but ultimately prove beneficial. Holt also underscores productive struggle, where learners grapple with challenging concepts to enhance problem-solving skills and comprehension, a method championed by researchers like Manu Kapur. It helps develop prior knowledge and increases learner motivation. Learners who attempt to solve problems first perform better on deep-learning questions after instruction.

Research shows that confusion is a common and significant predictor of learning during complex tasks. D’Mello suggests that intentionally perplexing learners can lead to deeper learning. Learners deserve space to sit quitely with productive challenges, working through potential solutions. The key is guiding learners to resolve confusion on their own, fostering careful deliberation and problem-solving.

Deep learning, like a good story, involves a conflict or impasse that leads to a resolution. The resolution should come from the learner’s actions, reinforcing that the learner, not the teacher, is the main character in the learning process.

By Way of Conclusion

In an era of transformation shaped by societal transformation and emerging technologies, "The Science of Tutoring" provides insights on the design tutoring approaches with the potential to bridge learning gaps and deepen understanding. Holt's work is a significant contribution, offering a nuanced, research-backed view on tutoring program design that include strategic scaffolding, timely feedback, and productive struggle. Holt's focus on interactive, student-centered methods and tailored support offers a crucial framework for educators, tutors, and policymakers. This book is essential for those looking to maximize the efficacy of tutoring programs to improve learning and achievement.

"The Science of Tutoring" challenges educators and policymakers to invest in the design and iteration of high-quality tutoring approaches grounded in a deep understanding of high-leverage mechanisms. Holt’s book serves as a generous and useful blueprint for educational innovation more widely.?

Read The Science of Tutoring here: https://scienceoftutoring.com/

I'm interested in hearing from colleagues with interests related to this book. Michael Goldstein , Kate Cochran , Jonathan McIntosh , Shalinee Sharma , Anu Malipatil , David Stevenson , Doug Jaffe , Kate Finnefrock , Daniel Reyes , Vic Vuchic , Alex Sarlin , Brad Bernatek , George Kane , Jonathan Sotsky , Michele Cahill , Erik Burmeister , Ian Connell , Nate McClennen , Peter Gault , Alex Grodd , Molly Mauer , Larry Berger , Kumar Garg , Adam Zalisk , David McCool , Daniel Jarratt , Kristen Huff , Michael H. Levine , Peter Gorman , Eva L. Baker , Diana Rhoten , Alisa Berger , Michael Horn , John Bailey , Matthew Peskay , Judy McKoy , Kristen Eignor DiCerbo , Nancy Poon Lue , Evo Popoff , Preston Smith , Ryan Holmes , Corey Scholes , John Danner , Sheryl Gómez , Mary Ryerse , Deborah Quazzo , Carri Schneider , Katie Boody Adorno , Matthew Brunell , Adeel Khan , Tom Vander Ark