Directive Vs. Non-Directive Tutoring Part 2

Tutoring Style, Tutoring Ethics: The Continuing Relevance of the Directive/ Nondirective Instructional Debate by Steven J. Corbett,

"A new look at the directive/nondirective debate"

The Fundamentals

• Something as fundamental as asking the student at the beginning of the tutorial what phase their draft is in could go a long way toward setting up just how hands on or off a tutor can be.
• Henry uses his teacherly authority, from the very start of the conference, by asking closed or leading questions that persuasively direct the flow of the rest of the tutorial.
• In contrast, during the session between Joe and Eddy, Eddy starts off right away asking Joe open-ended questions like how he feels about the paper, and where he wants to go from there.
• Severino concludes by asserting that it is difficult to say which of the above sessions was necessarily "better," but instead she urges those who educate tutors to avoid prescriptive tutoring dictum that do not take into consideration varying assignment tasks, rhetorical situations, and student personalities and goals–the “always” and “don’t” that can close off avenues for authentic listening and conversation.

Negotiating the Fine Line Between Talk, Teaching, and our Best Intentions

References

Grimm calls for writing center practitioners to move away from a focus on the paper to the cultural and ideological work of literacy: "negotiating assignment sheets to see if there might be any room for student creativity or even resistance; making students aware of multiple ways of approaching writing tasks and situations, in order to make tacit academic understandings explicit; rethinking tired admonishments regarding what we can not do when tutoring one-to-one. Grimm illustrates what a tough job this really is (p. 151)."

• The tutorial transcript presented by DiPardo illustrates how Morgan dominated the conversation, often interrupting Fannie, how Morgan appropriated the conversation, attempting to move Fannie toward her idea of a normal academic essay.
• DiPardo's study illustrated that enthusiastic listening was missing.
• Allowing the student to do most of the talking during one-to-ones to enable them to be more in control of the tutorial discourse, is one of, perhaps the most fundamental of, nondirective strategies.

Praxis: A Writing Center Journal (2003-2011). (n.d.). Tutoring Style, Tutoring Ethics: The Continuing Relevance of the Directive/ Nondirective Instructional Debate. Retrieved March 6, 2014, from http://praxis.uwc.utexas.edu/praxisarchive/?q=node/200

Hands off or on? The Directive/Nondirective Instructional Continuum

• Clark and Healy’s essay tracks the history of the nondirective (or noninterventionist) approach in the “orthodox writing center.”
• They describe how in the 1970s and early 1980s writing centers began to replace grammar drills and skills with what would become the higher-order concerns (HOCs) and lower-order (or later-order) concerns (LOCs) approach to tutoring.
• Clark and Healy note that “by being so careful not to infringe on other’s turf–the writer’s, the teacher’s, the department’s, the institution’s–the writing center has been party to its own marginality and silencing.”
• Cooper, for example, in her close reading of Brooks, argues “when writing center sessions remain resolutely focused on how a student can fix a paper, it is difficult for tutors to focus instead on what students know and need to know about writing.”
• For Cooper, and others, a strict minimalist approach forecloses the act of collaboration that could take place in a one-to-one, collaborative negotiation that takes both the tutor’s and the student’s goals into consideration.

"In short, tutors need to be aware of the rhetorical complexity–both interpersonal and intertextual–that any given tutorial can entail (p.151)."

Reconsidering our Best Intentions: Conclusion

• Directive and nondirective tutoring suggests that if we keep our pedagogy flexible and attuned to one writer at a time, we may better anticipate when to urge a closer rethinking of content or claim, when to pay attention to conventions and mechanics, and how and when to do both.
• Tutors need to be aware of the rhetorical complexity–both interpersonal and intertextual–that any given tutorial can entail.
• Adding the idea of modeling, a willingness to sometimes take a more hands-on approach to tutoring, can complement a tutor’s instructional repertoire.
• Finally, we should (and often do) realize that sometimes it’s all right to give a pointed suggestion, to offer an idea for a subtopic, to give explicit direction on how to cite MLA sources.

The Directive/Nondirective Instructional Continuum

• At the 2007 International Writing Centers Association Conference in Houston, TX, writing center legends Muriel Harris, Jeanne Simpson, Pamela Childers, and Joan Mullin discussed the “core assumptions” surrounding four topics in writing center theory and practice, including minimalist tutoring as standard.
• Debates surrounded the idea that when considering what has become the default instructional mode in one-to-one tutoring–the minimalist approach–writing center practitioners and theorists need to consider what we actually do versus what we say we do.

• Clark and Healy point to an earlier work of Harris’ from College English in 1983, “Modeling: A Process Method of Teaching,” in which she advances a directive approach. In describing the benefits of intervening in students’ writing processes, Harris asks “what better way is there to convince students that writing is a process that requires effort, thought, time, and persistence than to go through all that writing, scratching out, rewriting, and revising with and for our students? (p. 150)."
• Harris understood the value and importance of the ancient rhetorical tradition of modeling and imitation in the service of invention.
• In order to perform such moves as “scratching out” and “rewriting” tutors must have some confidence in their ability in offering more direct suggestions on issues of style and correct usage.

One-to-one Tutoring vs. The Minimalist Approach