The tutors are revolting…!
Well.. they’re not actually revolting, but they do keep leaving. This is a major problem for the tertiary education sector including private and public.
Maths and education blogger Damon Whitten has absolutely nailed this issue in his most recent post. Here’s the skinny:
- There are some great things happening in the entry levels of the post high school tertiary training environment.
- However, we have some massive systemic issues that continue to limit anyone’s success here, whether education providers or their learners.
- One issue is the high turnover of tutors and trainers.
- This is compounded by poor organisational management in organisations which means that accumulated knowledge and professional development walks out of the door when these tutors leave.
Here’s what I found really interesting: Damon cites research that says that it takes around four years for new tutors to learn each of these:
- classroom management;
- the actual content they are supposed to teach;
- and how to teach…
In that order. This should leave us gobsmacked… That means that a tutor will really start to hit her stride in about the 12th year of teaching.
I’d really encourage you to read the entire article as Damon also tackles the following questions.
- Why do tutors leave?
- What are some possible solutions to dealing with tutor churn?
- What lies ahead in the future?
These are critical questions moving forward. They are also key questions if you are involved in managing a tertiary organisation, (or worse, like me) own one, or are one of the hard working, under appreciated tutors thinking about leaving.
Comments to Damon’s blog if you want to argue about this!
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