It is not a secret that the Covid-19 pandemic has had a negative impact on education all over Europe. Some countries have been more affected than others depending on different variables. For example, the longer the schools remained closed, the greater were the learning losses. Also, students coming from lower socio-economic backgrounds experienced greater education loss than students from a higher one (Patrinos et al., 2022).
To reverse this negative tendency in education, the European Commission indicated, in its report on Covid-19 learning deficits in Europe, different policy recommendations. Among these, an interesting one is the implementation of tutoring programmes at school to compensate for learning deficiencies (De Witte, K. et al, 2023).
Tutoring was already a widespread practice in European countries long before the Covid pandemic. But what is it like to be a tutor in Europe? Do tutors have the necessary pedagogical skills for their profession? Would they like to acquire more competencies and skills in this regard?
To answer these questions, and better understand the tutor’s challenges, in the framework of our project MOOC for Tutors, we created a survey and circulated among our partners in 5 different countries: Belgium, Germany, Finland, Lithuania and Italy. We gathered around 60 answers and we will now analyse the most interesting findings.
The first result common to all five countries, with the exception of Finland, is that tutoring is not the main job of the professionals interviewed (Belgium 71,4%, Germany 83,3%, Finland 15,8%, Lithuania 50%, Italy 62,5%). However, most of the people interviewed that consider tutoring as their second job, are involved in the educational sector as teachers or project managers.
When it comes to pedagogical skills, the results are diversified. In Belgium, Germany, Finland and Lithuania, most of the interviewed professionals have acquired pedagogical skills, at the University or through training courses. In Italy instead, most of the people interviewed did not acquire pedagogical skills during their education.
However, the results change when it comes to courses to become a tutor. Overall, most of the professionals we interviewed have never taken part in specific courses to become tutors (Belgium 43%, Germany 67%, Finland no results for this question, Lithuania 75%, Italy 100%).
Finally, a positive result, as you can see from the chart below, was that most of the tutors we interviewed would be interested in taking part in courses on how to become tutors and acquire pedagogical skills to enhance their profession.
As tutoring has become one of the most common responses to newly emerging learning difficulties as a result of school closures during the Covid-19 pandemic (Horváth, A. et al, 2022), it is important that tutors have the necessary tools to bridge the gaps in student’s education and help them reach their academic goals. To answer to this necessity, the main goal of our MOOC for tutors project will be to create innovative resources to provide professionals with the essential pedagogical knowledge and innovative skills to help them support at best students’ learning.
Stay tuned to discover more about our project and next developments!
References
Patrinos, H.A., Vegas, E., & Carter-Rau, R. (2022). An Analysis of COVID-19 Student Learning Loss. (https://openknowledge.worldbank.org/server/api/core/bitstreams/2f5687e1-25a0-5d2d-9e41-29aa5d172ae0/content)
De Witte, K. and François, M. (2023). ‘Covid-19 learning deficits in Europe: analysis and practical recommendations’, EENEE Analytical report.
(https://eenee.eu/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/AR04_EENEE_Final-report_EAC-with-identifiers-1.pdf)
European Education and Culture Executive Agency, Eurydice, Horváth, A., Motiejūnaitė-Schulmeister, A., Noorani, S., et al., Teaching and learning in schools in Europe during the COVID-19 pandemic : 2020/2021, Publications Office of the European Union, 2022, https://data.europa.eu/doi/10.2797/1056