Innovation in tutorial action: case analysis at the university of Alicante

Abstract

Students’ entry into university in Spain has traditionally been linked to the belief that the transition from secondary education to university education necessarily implies the ability to learn on one’s own. There was a widely accepted conception according to which students assumed a kind of absolute autonomy when they started their university studies, which meant that the teaching staff should not intervene in their learning process. This reality that we have experienced in Spain for many years is opposed to what is experienced at the university centres with the highest recognition and prestige worldwide, namely Oxford and Cambridge, where tutorship plays an essential role. It was consequently necessary to re-examine the true meaning of university tutorship in Spain and this is the great opportunity that the European Higher Education Area can offer to Spanish Universities. The reformulation of university education must include a transformation in teacher-student relationships, placing a particular emphasis on the Socratic dialogue which, in our view, is the core of the tutorial relationship and needs to be made compatible with the tutor’s professional authority with a view to achieve the right balance in that relationship. At present, university educators are considered to be effective if they help their students to identify their interests and prospects, accompanying them and guiding them so that they can achieve their academic aspirations and goals, and making it easier for them to develop competences which they are going to need as social beings in order to see themselves as an active part both in the group and in the university context as a whole.

This is the framework in which the present research work has been carried out. Taking as a reference the perceptions, opinions and appraisals of tutors, our research had as its aim to analyse and assess the performance and reality of collaborative tutorial action at the University of Alicante, developed within the framework of the Tutorial Action Programme during the 2006-2007 academic year, the results of which lead to a clear conclusion: tutorial action represents a socialisation factor that supports and nourishes students throughout their academic experience at university.