Skilled tutors, competent in the subject matter, can provide a student with additional formal opportunities to examine, inquire and comprehend difficult to learn skills and knowledge. These understandings and skills may be difficult for a student to obtain only through the limited time available in class. A content expert that spends time in fruitful dialogue with a student can help establish student understanding and improve skills related to the discipline.
Guidance from the tutor can take the form of carefully constructed questions or examples specifically targeted to engage the student. The additional perspective of an expert can strengthen their participation in the classroom. A master tutor can help a student form the questions and arguments that lead that student to greater involvement in the classroom labs, activities and discussions. Tutors can customize topics to meet the needs of a particular student. Expansion of a topic can be suited to match the individual's style of learning, intellectual capability and motivating interests.
A tutor should carefully supervise the effort of a student to complete an assignment by focusing on "how they know what to do". Problems and analysis similar to homework should be examined, explained and used by the tutor to foster genuine dialogue that yields a deepening comprehension of the subject.
Tutors can provide another person who has a genuine interest int the success of the student. Intangibles can be addressed including skills in personal time management, self confidence and encouragement in addition to what is provided by parents, teacher and peers.
Content experts unskilled in tutoring can assist in completing assignments without establishing student comprehension. A tutor can also fail to foster fruitful conversation regarding the principles of the topics engaged. A student focused only on memorizing a specific set of procedures, without comprehension of principles, is not well served by a tutor.
Productive class participation may be suppressed. A student may elect to be less attentive and less efficient in class because the tutor can compensate for that less productive behavior. This is, in my experience, a major pitfall. Students who come to class knowing that all classroom activities designed to assist in developing comprehension are unnecessary (because the tutor will tell them what to do at some other time) may display less attention to the class and erode the relationship with the instructor. A chasm can then further develop between that student and the learning experience that is being laid in support of the student's understanding and discovery. In the worst case scenario I have seen students distract others during class precisely because these students have competent tutors and can devote the class to social conversation (a very desired activity in the teen age years). Such tutoring will enhance test performance but may suppress lab and classroom assignment grades.
A tutor may either help or hinder (it depends on the student and the tutor). The paradox is that, if a tutor is really outstanding, then the student will learn how to learn the material and the tutor will (over time) become unnecessary. The better the tutor the faster this student becomes an independent learner.
