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Tips for Tutors

How to Support and Supervise Your Students

Photo: Marcus Gloger / joker

It is not only investing additional work and time, if you accompany young people during a history competition. But it is also a chance to broaden your own knowledge of vivid history and to gather new experiences in co-operation of pupils and teacher.

Here you will find information about the general understanding of a tutor's role and main tasks to think about. The described situations are mainly for tutors who work with a group of more than five people. Nonetheless the information is valid for tutors who accompany less or even only one person.

Basically, independent of what you do, you are an adviser for problems and questions if needed or "a teacher in the background". Be aware of the differences between a teacher and a tutor. As pupils are used to you as a teacher it is helpful to prepare them for the different role you will have.

Central thoughts about the tutor's role:

The pupils define their ideas, plans and aims. Leave them the space to decide and to get active.
Especially for the pupils' motivation you need to be like an engine that initiates and keeps it running.
Keep your personal interest and expectation in the background and interact only if necessary.
The level of your actual support is closely connected to the skills of the group.
Training of techniques, which offer a frame and guidelines for the research, are essential for the pupils to reach their aims.
Regular meetings of the whole researchers' group are helpful and important for the process of the teamwork
The pupils have a right to understanding and care. Seek to find out more about your participants, their abilities and personal surrounding. And try to be constantly reachable for them. Altogether fantasy and courage is needed to guide a bunch of interested, young people from the first idea and enthusiasm through an up-and-down-process to the proud presentation of the finished issue of their research.

Planning and Organising

Pupils should plan the time of their research project and particular dates like interviews on their own. But:

this is probably something completely new and unknown to them and
they have to plan in a much longer timeframe than during a usual lesson Giving small tasks to everybody could be helpful for a faster process. But it might hinder pupils to see the complete context the work is done in. They neither can see a sense in the single working step they have done nor do they know why it had to be done at this exact moment and not later or earlier. Working steps tend to lose the connection to each other and to be without any relation to the aim. That's why it is necessary to plan this teamwork carefully.

To minimize a lack of orientation and communication at the very beginning of the project you could propose a structure of time which permanently follows the project's process. It is connected to a common concept with basic questions and important tasks. Talk about these concepts at each plenary meeting and check it for up-dates. They give a central theme for everybody, show achieved results and clarify the time remaining.

Keep in mind the following for dialogues about chosen topics:

Don't choose a topic which is too difficult to research.
Care for a connection between the topic and the surrounding of the participants.
Talk about topics that fit to the pupils' age.
Pupils should choose topics for which a realistic chance of researches is left.
Formulate precise questions for the aim of the research. For these conversations a good knowledge of the local history
and the pupils' personal background is of great advantage.

Don't forget about holidays and internships in between, when you do your planning. This may interrupt especially the time and content related continuation of the work. Participants may lose their clear view on the project after a longer break.

Motivation as a Key Task

As pupils are used to short term involvement it isn't easy to keep their motivation on a constantly high level over the whole period of the project. Create a long-time frame with regular meetings and possibilities to communicate. Give room for frustrations and feedback about the team, the whole group and the tutor as well.

A concrete question at the beginning helps to define the pupils' motivation and the topic within the motto of the contest they want to work on. These results constitute both a first sparkling interest and guidance through the following steps. At that time the pupils have to get clear about the practical meaning of exploring history through research. Explain the methods and contents of project work, its funny and serious sides.

The collection of sources can cause a decline of motivation as well. It might be a good idea if you visit archives and other places for possible researches before the young people start their work there. This can counteract unsatisfying experiences for them. Especially to the end of a project your intensive support will be needed. But it is not your job to do the work by yourself. There are many other moments and tasks which might discourage or demotivate the participants; be sensitive for those failures and support them to see their mistakes in relative terms.

Sometimes pupils want to achieve more than they are able to and frustration arises. In these cases they need support to have a break and distance from the project. Maybe it is even necessary to shorten the tasks to bring it to a successful ending.

If there is completely no motivation left it might be better to interrupt the project instead of doing the whole work by yourself. To maintain a small success and create a visible result at least the collected resources can be put together as a compilation.

Generally your expectations should fit to the pupils' abilities and not the other way round.

Working Techniques

Teamwork and Social Learning

Teamwork has several advantages:

Pupils get to know a different way of working and learning than in school lessons.
It fosters their creativity and social competence.
The work to be done can be divided in several sections. Each participant has got small pieces of work and responsibility.
By dividing the work it is easier for everybody to keep the overview over the full amount of tasks. Nevertheless the small groups need support to structure their time and work especially as they work mainly independent from the tutor. Frequent plenary sessions are important to ensure the communication between the small groups especially to keep group dynamics running by common reflection and evaluation. To guarantee a sound research the exchange of resources, experiences and ideas should be a fixed part of the plenary sessions. Sometimes it can be even difficult to transfer a feeling of teamwork to pupils who are used to work on and for themselves. But step by step and through learning by doing you can guide them to this new method. Besides all these advantages there are some limitations to teamwork.

Within project work the pupils can avoid completely to learn something new. They have got the possibility to choose what they know and can do best. This isn't a big problem for those who participate in the research, evaluation and creation of tasks and questions. But those who type and work on practical things won't learn a lot about historical research and interpretation. For both groups the benefit of learning is rather questionable.

Research

Before the group starts with its research some essential questions have to be clarified

1. What is the concrete topic we want to work with for our research?
2. What do we want to find out?
3. How can we find it out?
A general discussion about the contest's topic connected with a brainstorming may help to answer the first question. It could be helpful, if you do pre-researches to contribute some of your knowledge both to the discussion about the topic and to find suitable institutions for the research. But nevertheless the pupils have to be responsible for the decision about the topic and for finding their sources.

If not the pupils but you as their tutor choose the topic, it is extremely important that they collect and formulate the guiding questions to achieve a real access and motivation for their project.

Offer some organizational and content related frame for the research itself and participate in meetings or interviews if needed. Well established contacts to newspapers, institutions etc. are a big help as well.

Also some pre-information is useful, for example, to emphasize historical contradictions which pupils don't see during their search but gives them motivation to work on them.

Structure and Writing

After the pupils have collected all their material it has to be brought into a structure and the texts must be written. Here again intensive support is needed. Existing researches can be helpful demonstration material and older pupils or former participants can support the pupils as well.

If you tutor a big group it would make sense to organise a seminar of two days including in-puts concerning the function of e.g. introduction and conclusion of the text; such a seminar gives a lot of motivation and reduces the pupils' stress. But it also needs time to be organised and done.

Support for a detailed time-planning is definitely needed at this stage especially concerning the additional work the pupils have to do for school. But even with a schedule last minute experiences e.g. finishing the issue in the copy shop aren't completely avoidable.

There are some important things you should think about if you proof-read finished texts. Apart from grammatical, spelling or data problems there are some things which are more difficult to solve. If, for example, ...

... there is a lack of interpretation of central sources which mixes up a clear statement about the historical events.
... the author has got basic language problems which lead to incoherent descriptions.
... the text is written in such a dry style that there is no vividness and excitement left.
... a red line is missing because of logical and language deficits. In these cases it is not your job to rewrite the research or to suggest concrete improvements. Try to make the pupil aware of the weak points and a need of reworking. Your reasons for the criticism must be transparent and the pupils must be willing to take the consequences.

Nevertheless it can also be a success and enjoyable to read the written researches and sometimes it is even just the finished issue which you receive as a thank you.