Hugh C. Foot

The Sensitivity of Children and Adults as Tutors

Summary In view of conflicting claims about childrens sensitivity to the needs of other children in learning situations, the present study was designed to explore the sensitivity of child and adult tutors in one‐to‐one tutoring interactions. Sixteen adults and 31 11‐ and 9‐year‐olds tutored 47 9‐year‐old tutees on an animal classification task. Tutors were tested on their ability to apply the rules and knowledge they had obtained after training, and tutees were tested after being tutored. On all the verbal and nonverbal tutoring indices adult tutors showed greater sensitivity than child tutors: they were more likely to display behaviours which promoted efficient learning in their tutees. Results suggested that tutors operated on the basis of an implicit theory of teaching which involves three types of sensitivity: (1) sensitivity to the learners need to have sufficient information for understanding the task, coupled with adequate checks on the learners understanding; (2) sensitivity to the learners ne...

Friendship and Task Management in Children's Peer Tutoring

Summary The role of friendship in mediating childrens learning is poorly understood, and conflicting claims exist about the manner in which friendship may influence both the process and outcome of learning. Evidence from studies on peer tutoring suggests that children acting as tutors have difficulty co‐ordinating the physical, informational and social demands of a tutoring task, due to their limited cognitive resources. Eight‐ to nine‐year‐old boys and girls were allocated to friend or non‐friend pairs in one‐to‐one tutoring dyads for the purposes of examining the impact of friendship on the process and outcome of tutoring. Although tutoring dyads of friends might be expected to focus their resources on informational components of the task, because their pre‐established relationship would minimise the burden of managing the social demands of the task, the opposite was found. Child tutors who were friends allocated additional resources to the social management aspect of the task, including monitoring tut...

Admissions interviews at university as counselling tools

Abstract Little research has been conducted on the university admissions interview, and with increasing selection ratios there has been a tendency for universities to dispense with interviews altogether. This paper argues for a re-assertion of the interview as a valuable component of the admissions procedure, not necessarily to improve institutional decision-making but for the guidance and personal decision-making of candidates. The rationale for treating admissions interviews as opportunities for counselling are reviewed, and the advantages for both candidates and institutions are outlined.

Retaliation and the Attribution of Responsibility for Unfavorable Evaluations of Performance

Summary The hypothesis was tested that unfavorable performance evaluations made by a co-worker will be reciprocated by an S when the co-worker is perceived as having based his evaluations upon subjective judgment rather than upon objective measurement. Sixty-four female Ss from South Wales, aged between 17 and 39, were randomly allocated into pairs and followed a reversed-roles procedure in the performance of a judgmental task. The “operator” was led to believe that her performance had been adversely evaluated by the “inspector” either on the basis of the inspectors own opinion or on the basis of objective measurement. The results confirmed the hypothesis. When operators had a subsequent opportunity of evaluating the performance of their own inspectors, they tended to retaliate more if their own responses had been rejected by means of the judgment criterion than if rejected by means of the measurement criterion (p < .05). This finding supports a reciprocity interpretation and is discussed in terms of the...