Individualized teaching and learning at Oxford and American liberal arts colleges
Lawrence
Today magazine, Summer 2007
Lawrence University and President Jill Beck hosted a two-day conference on March 31 and April 1 titled “Tutorial Education: History, Pedagogy, and Evolution.” The conference included presidents, deans, researchers, and practitioners from some of the world’s influential higher education institutions, including: New College, Oxford; Williams College; Sarah Lawrence College; The College of Wooster; St. John’s College, Annapolis; Sewanee: University of the South; and Lawrence University — all of which offer tutorials.
Keynote speaker, New College Warden Alan Ryan, detailed the philosophy and storied history of the tutorial, and New College Bursar David Palfreyman discussed the growing economic pressures on the tutorial.
Visiting Professor of Education Robert Beck, and colleagues participating in the pedagogy panel, enumerated the reasons why erosion of the tutorial would be a serious blow to liberal arts institutions, because of the form’s advantages for learning.
Presenters, including College of Wooster President R. Stanton Hales and St. John’s President Christopher Nelson, and several panel discussions, focused on the successes of the tutorial and the importance of sustaining tutorial education into the future.
Gavin Williams, a fellow of St. Peter’s College, Oxford, asked four colleagues of very different academic backgrounds to write about their experiences of the tutorial system, on which he drew in preparing his paper for the Lawrence conference and which will be published in an upcoming issue of Oxford Magazine.
The participating colleges and universities shared their individual models for tutorial learning and some of the challenges and issues they have encountered with the tutorial approach. Pedagogical models for tutorials vary in range. The College of Wooster requires independent study projects for all senior undergraduates. New College, Oxford, conducts two-to-three-person tutorials based on weekly reading, writing, and presentation. At Williams, students participate in ten-person courses that divide into pairs for deeper tutorial investigations. St. John’s offers individual tutorial approaches within the context of small-group seminars in the Great Books. Every student at Sarah Lawrence is assigned a don (tutor). Lawrence encourages individualized approaches within music-ensemble teaching and research courses in the humanities and social sciences and in the laboratory sciences, as does Sewanee.
Together, participants defined several important challenges and discussed ways to overcome them, such as quantifying student outcomes in tutorial learning and how to support faculty as they continue to develop innovative tutorial approaches across the academic disciplines.
“The conference opened doors to possible partnerships with these
institutions to study and measure outcomes of the tutorial approach and to seek grants to fund research to demonstrate the real value that tutorials provide to students,” said Robert
Williams, assistant professor of education, cognitive science, and linguistics.
Lawrence University, in partnership with the other participating colleges and universities, intends to form an electronic network of practice.
“The network will focus on education philosophy and will provide a means for exchanging ideas, taking joint public-policy stands on issues such as accountability, and furthering the role of liberal arts in higher education,” President Beck said.
A DVD documenting the conference and highlighting keynote speakers will be available from Lawrence.
The conference was made possible with support from J. Thomas Hurvis ’60 and Julie Esch Hurvis ’61 and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.