3 things to consider before you hire a tutor for your child

1. Identify your goal

Are you trying to pass a test or a class? Or are you actually trying to learn something?

If all you want to do is pass a test or a class or get some other short-term result and be done with it, that’s a performance goal. However, if you want to actually understand an idea and be able to transfer it to different situations, that’s a learning goal.

While parents may have both performance and learning goals for their children, in general, learning should be placed above performance. Learning will lead to better performance, but it will happen at its own pace.

If you decide to use tutoring to achieve a performance goal, be aware of the pitfalls. If a student needs excessive test prep to pass a class or get into a program or college, the student may be set up for failure in whatever comes next.

2. Look carefully at the tutor’s actions

Good tutoring is not just the tutor teaching the student. In order for tutoring to be effective, students should be actively involved in the process, not just sitting silently while the tutor talks.

Here are a few things to listen for when a tutor is working with a student:

If the student does something right, does the tutor always say “Good!” and move on? Or does the tutor sometimes ask follow-up questions to check thinking? It’s better when there are follow-up questions, because sometimes students draw conclusions that help get answers correct on the current type of problem but then cause mistakes on the next types.

If the student makes a mistake, does the tutor say, “No, do it this way”? Or does the tutor say, “Tell me why you made that choice”? Getting the student to explain their choice enables the tutor to gain more insight into how the student goes about solving problems and to catch any errors in the student’s thinking.

Does the tutor help the student practice how to deal with confusion and mistakes? Students learn the most when they make a mistake and recognize that they made one. A good tutor will not intervene to prevent the mistake, but rather allows the mistake to happen and then helps the student to identify and fix it. This approach teaches skills the student can use when the tutor is no longer there.

A tutor who says “OK, this is a quadratic equation so you need to factor,” or “This question is about similes, so look for the words ‘like’ or ‘as,’” has done most of the thinking for the student and is not helping them long-term. Students should be asked to read a question and decide on a plan before the tutor gives any feedback.

3. Keep expectations reasonable

There is no guarantee that tutoring will pay off.

While tutoring is generally more likely to benefit a student than not, research on tutoring is contradictory because there are so many factors at play. And too much time spent on tutoring can actually have a negative effect on students.

For instance, tutor expertise in a subject might increase student performance, but it might also make no difference that you can readily see.

A tutor’s previour experience can have a positive effect, but surprisingly it could also have a negative effect on students.

One of the reasons the research is all over the place when it comes to tutoring is because student characteristics vary. For instance, some students may put forth more effort or have more motivation than others. Outside factors such as classroom instruction and living situations also come into play. Tutoring can only do so much.