RAPPORT
Issue 5 (August 2020)
• Reviewing; both stages of reviewing;
‣ first of all, collecting data on what
happened and what seemed to work,
then
‣ making sense of it, perhaps evolving
more accurate and useful
understandings and accounts of what
happened, happens, in tutoring;
• And then, of course, drawing
implications for future practice, whether
at an individual, an institutional or a
professional level.
There is another cycle at work here. A
good tutor helps their students to
undertake a similar process. This process
may start anywhere – but that’s the
beauty of cycles. Tutoring often starts with
reflection, with the student in some sense
dissatisfied by their current experience of
being a student; knowing, however
imprecisely, that they want things to be
different, better. And the tutor encourages
and supports this process of review,
reflection, of digging as deep as is
currently appropriate, and helping the
student to draw implications for action on
the part of the student, this time helping
students to make sense – not telling the
student what sense it made, but helping
the student to make their own sense –
perhaps helping the student to reframe
their view of their world, supporting and
perhaps even occasionally leading, but
conscious always that it is the student
who is going to have to do the work, to
make the changes.
Or, as another starting point, helping the
student to plan how they will make best
use of the University and their studies.
But, hopefully, always a cycle; more
helpfully, a spiral, an upward spiral,
embracing theory and practice which
meet in making sense.
The qualification
The SEDA qualification towards which
participants were working strongly and
explicitly encourages this process of
sense-making, and, also explicitly, the
process of development. The qualification
is about more that competences – it is
also explicitly rooted in values. To
succeed, participants have to
demonstrate these values in action:
• Developing understanding of how
people learn
• Practicing in ways that are scholarly,
professional and ethical
• Working with and developing learning
communities
• Valuing diversity and promoting
inclusivity
• Continually reflecting on practice to
develop ourselves, others and
processes.
So; using and adding to what is already
known, being scholarly as well as
professional and ethical, working
collaboratively and inclusively, and
continuing to reflect on their development.
The award also requires the attainment of
outcomes that are specifically about
development – identifying development
needs, planning and undertaking
professional development, and continuing
to review the relationships between
development and practice. An attention to
development that is almost relentless;
development that has to be evidenced in
a portfolio; evidence that requires the
making and remaking of sense, relating
theory and practice to each other, and
thereby testing both, and expanding both.
These requirements are generic to all
SEDA-PDF qualifications, although of
course they play out differently for
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