I talk to parents every day about their children's tutoring needs and one of the most common questions I hear is: “How often will my child need tutoring sessions?” As any parent prepares to decide what is the best way to support their child academically outside of the classroom, this is certainly a question that comes to mind. Every student is different and some will need intensive support. For most students, it makes sense to meet with a tutor or academic coach twice a week. But for the vast majority of students, meeting with a tutor twice a week will result in faster and more lasting results.
Research continues to show that students perform better when they participate in tutoring services on a regular and consistent basis. For most students, twice a week provide this support without feeling overwhelming. One-on-one tutoring has the strongest evidence of effectiveness, but it costs the most and reaches the fewest number of students. Some studies show that larger tutoring groups of two to four students, while less effective than individual agreements, still pay dividends for learning.
However, at least one study on tutoring one to four after school found learning benefits only for black students who participated. Individual teaching has long been recognized as the most effective method of increasing a child's confidence and supporting them to reach their full potential. But it can be costly and difficult to know where to start if you're looking for a tutor in your home. In-person tutoring may involve the tutor going to your home, but it usually involves a trip to the guardian's home.
Participation is one of the main challenges, both in terms of building a relationship with each student and maintaining interactive tutoring in the absence of traditional materials such as whiteboards, or when circumstances dictate telephone tutoring rather than a video format, said Christine SySantos Levy, special project coordinator at the Johns Hopkins School of Education Research and Reform Center. With regular, one-on-one mentoring with a tutor who trains himself and focuses on the learning process, you can create incredible results. It causes the student to become dependent on long-term tutoring and does not help them when tutoring stops or when they go to college. It is important that the tutor you use receives regular training from a third party, such as a more experienced tutor, to help develop their self-awareness as a tutor. One of the parents mentioned that tutoring consisted of their daughter “not trying, then going to tutoring to put out the fire, solve the problem, become lazy again”.
While we have talked about individual tutoring so far with an emphasis on the relationship between the tutor and the student, this relationship is defined in its terms. City Year, a nonprofit organization that tutors approximately 38,000 students in 29 cities, is already planning to provide updated training to its guardian body. The best online tutoring sites provide quite extensive support in the office if you need it, as well as worksheets and activities for your child to do between lessons. Such is the strength of mentoring research that other countries are securing mentoring as a central strategy to get children back on track. Plus, with the preparation and trips the tutor must make, less than an hour isn't worth it when it comes to an at-home tutoring session.
Research on high-dose mentoring, generally defined as one-on-one mentoring or tutoring in very small groups at least three times a week, or for approximately 50 hours during a semester, is robust and compelling.
