COLLABORATIVE DIALOGUE PATTERNS IN NATURALISTIC ONE-TO-ONE TUTORING

Naturalistic one-to-one tutoring is more effective than traditional cl assroom teaching methods, but there have been few attempts to examine the features of normal tutoring that might explain its advantage. This project explored dialogue patterns in two samples of naturalistic tut oring with normal unskilled tutors (as opposed to expert tutors): grad uate students tutoring undergraduates in research methods and high sch ool students tutoring 7th graders in algebra. We analysed the extent t o which those tutoring protocols manifested components that have been emphasized in contemporary pedagogical theories and intelligent tutori ng systems: active student learning, sophisticated pedagogical strateg ies, specific examples and cases, collaborative problem solving and qu estion answering, deep explanatory reasoning, convergance toward share d meanings, feedback, error diagnosis and remediation, and affect. The most prominent components consisted of collaborative problem solving, question answering, and explanation in the context of specific exampl es. We identify frequent dialogue patterns that characterize these col laborative processes.