ON-LINE TOPIC

THE ROLE OF THE TUTOR

 Spend a few minutes thinking about and making notes of all the different roles you fulfil as a tutor. Once you have a list, move on to the next slide

 There are many different aspects to our role as a tutor and these may change with different groups of learners. Some of the suggestions you might have come up with include: record keeper personal tutor resource developer disciplinarian motivator teacher timekeeper assessor

 Although we may take on many roles during our teaching, there are some that are more problematic & should be avoided including (also see section on ‘boundaries’) :   friend/ confidant: You should avoid personal relationships with your learners, you are there as a professional & need to maintain that distinction to retain respect counsellor: Although you should provide support for your learners in relation to their course, you should also be aware of the support provided within your organisation for issues outside the course such as childcare or finance & refer learners asking about them to the relevant professionals Please remember that, if your learners disclose anything to you that might constitute abuse, you have a legal duty to pass this on to the appropriate agency within your organisation.

 Whatever other duties are incorporated into our role as a tutor, our main role is to be…

… a facilitator of learning

In this way we will help out learners to successfully achieve their aims and objectives. To be able to understand this aspect more fully, it is important to understand the teaching & learning cycle and our role in it.

quality assurance & evaluation identifying needs planning learning assessing learning enabling learning

 Most tutors follow the cycle from beginning to end with different roles at each stage although, depending on your own teaching situation, you may not be fully involved in all activities.

 You should spend some time before moving on to the next slide making notes about what might be included in each stage of the cycle

 Identifying needs: learning plans.

this involves identifying the needs of the learner (& of the organisation). This is usually done through initial assessments and the negotiation of individual 

Planning learning:

this may involve developing a scheme of work, preparing session plans, devising resources & teaching/learning materials 

Enabling learning:

at this stage your role will generally involve teaching & facilitating learning using a variety of approaches to ensure inclusivity



Assessing learning

: at this stage your role will be to check that your learners have actually gained the necessary/planned skills & knowledge.



Quality assurance & evaluation

an ongoing process throughout the cycle : your role here may include obtaining feedback from others (including your learners), evaluating yourself and the programme in order to strengthen future deliveries. However, evaluation should be  A table giving a more detailed breakdown of roles & responsibilities at each stage of the cycle is available in Gravells, A., (2011), Preparing to Teach in the Lifelong Learning Sector Learning Matters. p. 9&10.

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Describe what your role, responsibilities & boundaries would be as a teacher in terms of the teaching/training cycle.

 Word count: 300-500

     Although this assignment has one of the larger word limits, it’s still not very much so your writing will need to be really focused to cover all the aspects.

Please remember that you will also need to revise the information in the ‘Boundaries’ PowerPoint for this assignment.

The key to this assignment is in linking your comments firmly to the stages of the teaching/learning cycle rather than just generally talking about the role of the tutor so….

… following an introductory paragraph you might consider working through the stages of the cycle in turn & reflecting on your role at each stage (if you find it easier to use the stages of the cycle as paragraph headings, that’s fine) Your final paragraph should deal specifically with boundaries