Tutoring vs teaching

‘Teach’ derives from Old English tǣcan (to indicate), with the same root as digit, the pointing finger. ‘Tutor’ comes from Latin tueri (to guard), related to intuition and watching closely. A teacher points at the path to follow; a tutor guards you walking it to ensure you arrive.

Mainstream teaching is limited by inherent constraints: lesson delivery, large classes, rigid schedules, group statistics & targets. Tutors can be highly adaptive and are exclusively responsible for individual progress & results.

Small-group tutoring produces roughly double the effect on academic progress compared to traditional classrooms, primarily through live feedback & flexibility.

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Reactive & proactive approaches

OISE masterclasses combine both reactive & proactive tutoring.

• Reactive / remedial tutoring seeks out difficulties with topics already studied and ‘cures’ them. Similar to visiting a doctor with a health concern and following a course of treatment to recover, it does not necessarily prevent future injury or illness or build health. Most extra tuition functions like this.
• Proactive / pre-emptive tutoring is more like working with a personal fitness trainer to stay on top of your health and continually improve your strength, flexibility, agility, endurance, etc. It pre-teaches topics that are soon to be covered at school so that school itself becomes revision.

Masterclasses may have to deal with problem areas first, but aim to move students up to proactive learning as soon as possible. Front-running regular lessons ensures students arrive at school already familiar with the material. This competence begets confidence, transforming the classroom from a place of first exposure into one of reinforcement and deeper understanding.

Most sessions include elements of both remediation and pre-emption.

Key aspects

In masterclasses, students build knowledge & technical skills whilst learning to think like a scholar in their subjects.

• Knowledge of subject content
• Command of terminology
• Technical ability
• Continual live feedback
• Mastery through practice
• Reteaching of worked solutions
• Emulation of model answers
• Socratic questioning
• Preparation, not homework
• Exam practice
• Small face-to-face groups
• Adaptive lessons

A typical after-school masterclass

• 4:25pm: Students arrive, settle in
• 4:30pm: Tutor reviews preparation work with each student
• 4:45pm: Students practise the prepared topic
• 5:00pm: Introduction of new concept with worked examples
• 5:15pm: Socratic questioning session
• 5:30pm: Individual/pair practice
• 5:45pm: Next week’s preparation introduced
• 6:00pm: Session ends, students leave confident

Structure vs students

Teaching is often necessarily prescriptive. Large classes tend to move through topics in an order and at a pace dictated by exam boards. Schedules ensure every topic is ‘covered’ – taught, not necessarily learnt.

Masterclasses are distinct by design: the structuring principle of the course is the students themselves. They are deliberately adaptive yet rigorously bound to the syllabus to ensure exam success.

Students sometimes work together on shared topics, and sometimes pursue independent paths. Lessons may follow sequences or stand alone. Time is spent on what is most relevant to individual progress.

Techniques

Live feedback catches behaviour and mistakes that online learning misses. It is immediately relevant rather than being given some days or weeks later through marked homework, for example.

Think-aloud protocols and Socratic questioning encourage students to prove their ability and justify their decisions.

Worked examples, model answers and students’ own solutions are compared and dissected.

Reteaching (‘teach the teacher’) encourages students to understand for themselves so they can explain to others and field questions.

Mastery practice makes problem-solving instinctive and refines technique in preparation for exams.

Thorough familiarity with terminology gives students conceptual hooks to hang more detailed and procedural knowledge on. Naming something accurately makes building knowledge and skills around it far easier.

‘Preparation before’ class instead of ‘homework afterwards’ cultivates agency, accountability and confidence.

Focusing on student output (practice) rather than teacher input (explanations) trains students in ‘performing their knowledge’ under exam-like conditions.

Face-to-face learning

Technology serves certain aspects of learning well. In contrast to big-screen, online or AI learning, however, a masterclass is a decidedly human environment.

To gain and maintain motivation, teenagers typically need to know their efforts will be witnessed in real life. That cannot be properly achieved remotely through a computer screen.

In some classrooms, students may resemble a (cinema) audience – passive, expecting to be taught. A good learning environment, however, is more akin to an intelligent, challenging discussion around the dinner table.

Format

At the end of each masterclass, tutors assign preparatory tasks. The next session begins by exploring understanding, clarifying concepts and addressing misconceptions – before moving on to new topics.

Within each lesson, students may look in depth at a specific trickier topic or be introduced to several. The aim is mastery of all topics, and tutors choose resources, activities and methods for their efficiency towards that end.

Conversations follow a diagnostic rhythm. The tutor questions, the student explains, and gaps reveal themselves naturally. Understanding deepens through challenge rather than lecture.

To get their homework done, students learn to be increasingly disciplined with their routines and efficient with their techniques. Homework isn’t busywork to be checked off – it is preparation for an intellectual performance. This transforms the student-homework relationship from an obligation into a rehearsal.

Homework instructions are specific research questions requiring students to both read and interpret resources before discussing them in the following session, rather than broad directives like ‘Study chapter 4.’ This naturally covers syllabus content while engaging deeper faculties.

Memory & recall

Getting knowledge into memory is a tiny part of learning and can be done alone. Getting knowledge back out differentiates exam success from failure.

The brain gets better at whatever it does repeatedly, but only the specific task it repeats. If a student reads a course book over and over, they will become highly proficient at reading that book and not much else. If they sit passively in front of videos or in classrooms, they will get good at only that. But if they read (or listen or watch) and practise recalling what they have read, then they will get better at recalling. In this sense, testing (recalling) is learning.

Tutored testing is powerful, just like a parent can have an impressive effect by testing their child on a word list or their times tables. Masterclass students repeatedly practise facing the ‘exam’ in the form of a tutor who is sympathetic, encouraging and knows the best questions to ask.

Knowledge precedes understanding

“I just don’t get it, so I can’t learn it!” is a common frustration. Many students think they should understand something before learning it. But knowledge must come first so that understanding can follow. Successful students learn almost blindly, gathering knowledge and practising until they understand.

When it comes to school subjects, ‘knowledge’ is sometimes little more than complicated terminology for relatively straightforward things. That is why course books have glossaries with short definitions. Successful students have often memorised the glossary, if not the entire course book, and can therefore articulate their knowledge properly.

Enjoying Learning

‘If children enjoy lessons, they’ll learn more’ does not, unfortunately, seem to be true beyond primary school. At secondary level the reverse is truer – students who learn more and perform better academically enjoy school more.

The solution to enjoying learning is to get better at it. By learning how to learn, students both learn better and enjoy it more.

Entertaining lessons, interactive technology, ‘fun’ activities, edu-apps, visiting speakers, school trips, etc all attempt to make learning enjoyable – a very worthy aspiration. But while these methods may engage students, they don’t by themselves improve grades. The relationship works differently.

In general, people enjoy doing what they do well. Students don’t learn more simply because lessons are fun. Rather, they enjoy subjects they’re good at. The better they become, the more they’ll enjoy school and even exams.

The path to enjoying learning runs through competence, not entertainment.