RAPPORT ISSUE 5 | Page 32

RAPPORT Issue 5 (August 2020) power imbalance (Mann, 2001) is a feature of the tutor student relationship that needs to be acknowledged and managed. (Portfolio 11, CS1). Salter-Dvorak (2017) describes a tutorial as a social learning space where power relations and identities may be ‘asymmetrical, contested, and fluid’, the interaction being ‘embedded in wider social contexts and structures’. Similarly, a common tutorial activity of giving feedback is described as ‘enacting power relations wherein Teacher and Student perform asymmetrical roles, primarily due to unequal access to knowledge and institutional rights to knowledge’ (Drew & Heritage 1992: 20). Other writers have identified the fundamentally unequal nature of interaction between undergraduate students and staff ‘due to the gatekeeping function of assessment which positions learners as permanent novices’ (Lea, 2005:193). Simply being aware of this power imbalance here, the nuance of interaction between language used and personal agency seem to make the tutor much more conscious of who has the 'right to speak' in this space (Bourdieu 1991), and they are consequently more deliberate in their turn-taking. This reflects a socially situated complexity that goes beyond the institutional commitment to 'working as partners' and has implications for the role of the tutor and how students are inducted into disciplinary and professional communities. Gourlay (2009) critiques the widespread application of Lave and Wenger's Communities of Practice (1998) models to academia, suggesting it is a poor fit with an academic context. Looking specifically at managing tutorial interaction, recognition of structural inequalities requires tutors to devote considerable energy and attention to the moment by moment meaning-making of real dialogue between student and tutor. Overall, there seems to be a mismatch between the oversimplified theoretical frames which inadequately describe the richness of these accounts. Failure and identity threat as impetus for tutorials Of the case studies focusing on providing academic support, ten out of twelve address student failure. Some students have failed modules while others are repeating the year, others still are unconcerned about underperformance and risk failing: I taught him for one module …. and he failed this module alongside others. He is resitting Level 4 and I am now the module tutor for 2 of the modules that he is resitting. (Portfolio 20, CS 3) I met with a student to discuss her return to Year 1 of the course. She has had to retake 2 x 20 credit modules to complete her Year 1 and has just commenced these in semester 2. (Portfolio 11, CS 1) He seemed content with the idea that his current standard would achieve a 2.2. (Portfolio 9, CS 3) Portfolio 5, CS 1 examines a writing support session with two first year undergraduate students who have been referred following poor performance on first assignment. Academic writing has been identified as something to improve. All these tutorials begin from a position of failure, either actual (where they have failed) or anticipated (where the students 31