Do Tutors’ Content Knowledge and Beliefs About Learning Influence Their Assessment of Tutees’ Understanding?

Do Tutors’ Content Knowledge and Beliefs About Learning Influence Their Assessment of Tutees’ Understanding? Stephanie Herppich (herppich@ipn.uni-kiel.de) Institute for Science and Mathematics Education at the University of Kiel Olshausenstrasse 62, 24098 Kiel, Germany Jorg Wittwer (wittwer@ipn.uni-kiel.de) Institute for Science and Mathematics Education at the University of Kiel Olshausenstrasse 62, 24098 Kiel, Germany Matthias Nuckles (matthias.nueckles@ezw.uni-freiburg.de) University of Freiburg, Department of Educational Science, Instructional and School Research Rempartstrasse 11, 79098 Freiburg, Germany Alexander Renkl (renkl@psychologie.uni-freiburg.de) University of Freiburg, Department of Psychology, Developmental and Educational Psychology Engelbergerstrasse 41, 79085 Freiburg, Germany gleaning diagnostically relevant information about a tutee. For example, Chi, Siler, and Jeong (2004) examined tutoring in biology and found that tutors appeared to be relatively accurate in knowing the tutees’ correct understanding but they failed to assess the tutees’ incorrect understanding including their false beliefs and flawed mental models. The researchers interpreted this finding as evidence that tutors mainly used their own normative perspective as a basis for estimating what the tutees did and did not know. Similar findings were obtained by Graesser, Person, and Magliano (1995), who showed that tutors rarely diagnosed a tutee’s incorrect understanding. Instead, their actions were largely based on a curriculum script that determined which skills and concepts were to be learned by the tutees (see also Putnam, 1987). In light of these findings, the question arises as to what influences the tutors’ assessment of a tutee’s understanding. In this article, we shed light on two characteristics of tutors that might impact their assessment of tutees. Specifically, we look at the tutors’ content knowledge and beliefs about learning. To theoretically elucidate the role of these tutor characteristics, we draw on research in the field of human tutoring and classroom teaching. Abstract Research has established that tutors often have difficulty with accurately assessing a tutee’s understanding. However, it is a completely open question which characteristics of tutors might affect their assessment. In an empirical study with N = 22 tutor-tutee dyads, we used a methodology developed by Chi, Siler, and Jeong (2004) to examine the influence of the tutors’ content knowledge and beliefs about learning on their assessment accuracy. Results replicated previous research in showing that tutors overestimated a tutee’s correct understanding and underestimated a tutee’s incorrect understanding. In addition, more accurate assessments were positively related with tutees’ learning. Finally, content knowledge had a positive impact on assessment accuracy, whereas beliefs about learning were not strongly associated with assessment accuracy. Thus, assessing a tutee’s understanding seems to be important for the effectiveness of human tutoring. Moreover, the results suggest that the tutors’ assessment accuracy is largely influenced by their content knowledge. Keywords: assessment accuracy; beliefs about learning; content knowledge; human tutoring Introduction In educational psychology, it is widely acknowledged that for learning to be effective instruction should be tailored to a learner (Kalyuga, 2007). However, such learner-tailored instruction makes it necessary to assess a learner’s individual understanding. Therefore, the ability to collect diagnostically relevant information about a learner is a central component that constitutes teaching competence (Wittwer & Renkl, 2008). One-to-one tutoring is a form of instruction where tutors can make intensive use of the possibility of freely interacting with a tutee in order to assess a tutee’s understanding. Accordingly, tutors can be expected to have a detailed “model of the student” (Putnam, 1987). However, research has shown that tutors often have difficulty with Tutors’ Content Knowledge There is widespread agreement that having a deep understanding of a subject matter is an important condition for effective teaching. Research has shown that teachers with higher content knowledge show, for example, a greater understanding of important concepts in a domain and of the relationships among them (e.g., Borko & Putnam, 1996). However, the question as to how content knowledge specifically affects the assessment of learners in the process of teaching has not been the object of much research (cf. Baumert & Kunter, 2006). For example, Krauss et al. (2008) found that teachers with higher content knowledge tended to