1. Reconceptualising Personal Tutoring: Bringing Pedagogy to Principles and Practice
Dr. Alison Stenton
Senior Tutor
Green Templeton College
University of Oxford

2. Problems with personal tutoring
“he spent many hours with his personal tutees”
Wife of Malcolm Anderson
Problems with personal tutoring
Onerous, stressful
Outside of academic skillset
Low-priority ‘pastoral’ task
Endlessly reviewed
Incompatible with 21C HE?
“today’s students are likely to wonder whether their professor could pick them out of a line-up”
Anonymous Academic
Sam

3. RARA findings Accessibility of Senior Tutor
Team teaching: pastoral support embedded in curriculum
PT as ‘insurance’?
PT as career mentor
Sam
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STUDY AT THE DENTAL INSTITUTE

4. “Learning to think is about being drawn into dialogues”
Towards a pedagogy of Personal Tutoring
“Learning to think is about being drawn into dialogues”
Rupert Wegerif
Personal tutoring is teaching
Dialogic encounter: no need to switch out of teaching mode into ‘student support’ mode
‘Learning talk’ as foundation of academic practice
PT framed as students learning to think about themselves in relation to their subjects
“the teacher...acts as a commentator or decoder who challenges and opens up alternative readings of experience”
Mark Tennant
Sam

5. Take-aways Reframing PT encounter as teaching – ‘learning talk’
Pastoral support to be more carefully embedded in all university roles: collective responsibility
Vital role of Senior Tutor
Sam/Alison

6. References
Anonymous Academic (2018) “Student mental health is suffering as universities burst at the seams”, The Guardian (May 11th). Available at: burst-at-the-seams
Lowenstein, M. (2005) “If Advising is Teaching, What Do Advisors Teach?” NACADA Journal: Fall 25:2, Available at:
Pells, R. (2018) “Cardiff Plans Review after Suicide of ‘overworked’ Lecturer” Times Higher Education Supplement (June 8th). Available online:
Stenton, A. (2011) “How Could a Dialogic Approach to Teaching Transform Students’ Learning? A Discussion with Reference to Medical Education” Higher Education Research Network Journal 4: 15–22
Tennant, M. (2006) Psychology and Adult Learning (3rd edn) (Routledge, Abingdon).
Wegerif, R. (2008) “Dialogic or dialectic? The significance of ontological assumptions in research on educational dialogue” British Educational Research Journal 34(3),
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7. Raising Awareness, Raising Aspiration