A study of teacher-student interactions during reading in one-to-one literacy tutoring sessions

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to observe and analyze teacher interactions when students read a text during one-to-one literacy tutoring sessions in order to identify features of their interactions and describe how these help further the students' literacy learning. The sociocultural nature of learning was used as the theoretical framework for the study. The research was conducted using a qualitative case study approach. A teacher and one group of students were observed during an academic semester. Data were collected from the following sources: lesson plans, interviews with participants, field notes, Reading Miscue inventory, and audio and video tapes of the tutoring sessions. Only the reading experiences of the tutoring sessions were analyzed. The results showed the types of teaching and learning strategies used by the teacher and students, and changes in the students' reading strategies. The findings suggested that the changes in the students' reading strategies might be due to the teacher's efforts at critical learning moments during their interactions, to guide the students into making use of their intuitive knowledge of language cues. The results of the study reflect the need for educators to focus on the nature of teacher-student interactions during literacy tutoring and the way in which teachers scaffold students' learning of literacy concepts and strategies. While scaffolds are necessary to a child's learning, what is done in these scaffolds is more critical to moving the child toward independence.