Generalist tutoring

I was not convinced (and a little disappointed) in Dinitz and Kiedaisch’s study. At the beginning of the article, I thought they were going to do a study of tutors who had no prior knowledge of the discipline in which the tutees were writing in. Yet, for their study, they choose the discipline of literature. While I think that literature does have certain conventions that undergrads might not know, I’m willing to bet that everyone at least at some point in their life has studied literature. When I was reading their article, I was expecting Dinitz and Kiedaisch to study a different discipline, one which not everyone has had experience with. For example, what would the study show had the tutees been writing in the field of engineering? Would someone who had experience writing in the engineering field react in the same way as Joanne does by taking over the student’s paper? While this might be a little nit picky, I think their argument would have been more convincing had they chosen a different discipline. Moreover, I was not convinced when Dinitz and Kiedaisch say at the beginning of the article that “what we saw led us to conclude that the ‘ignorant’ or generalist tutor sometimes has limitations” (261) and then in the end include the customary disclaimer, “We know we can’t reach conclusions based on this small number of cases, but in the sessions we looked at, the tutor’s knowledge of how to think and write in the discipline did seem important.” (269)