Distributed Tutorial Strategies

In one-on-one tutoring sessions, lessons are sometimes distributed across several interaction episodes. We observed recurring patterns in the way that physics tutors parcel dialogue sub-goals between problem-solving discussions and post-solution, reflective discussions. We call these patterns “distributed tutorial strategies.” They attempt to achieve two main functions: generalizing from the current problem and building the student’s repertoire of methods for achieving particular problem-solving goals. This paper illustrates several distributed strategies that physics tutors use to achieve these instructional goals and presents a framework for describing the goal structure of distributed tutorial strategies.