Tutoring in a literacy center: an exploration of a struggling learner’s missed opportunities for substantial contributions

Researchers have demonstrated that tutoring is an effective instructional model that relies upon the relationships among the tutor, the tutee, and the curriculum and not merely instructional skills or strategies. In our microethnographic case study, we investigated interactional patterns of two tutors who were pre-service literacy teachers working individually with Andy, a first-grade student, in a university reading center. Through deductive coding of 225 minutes of tutoring video, the researchers found that ingrained tutoring scripts and metaphors for learning adversely impacted the instructional relationships between the tutors and Andy. Scripts and metaphors limited the enacted behaviors of the tutee and the tutors since a pursuit of right answers dominated their work together. This, in turn, resulted in many missed opportunities for Andy to make substantial contributions to the tutoring interactions.