Personal Tutor perspectives on the implementation of academic families within the personal tutoring structure to encourage near-peer support and build a sense of community

Wendy Leadbeater

doi:10.71179/ec6ef850

Authors

Wendy Leadbeater University of Birmingham Author https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3141-9421

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.71179/ec6ef850

Keywords:

Personal Tutoring, Academic Families, Mixed group meetings, Community of Practice, Shared learning

Abstract

Personal Tutoring is key to supporting students in Higher Education. The Personal Tutor supports their tutees through meeting individually or in groups, resulting in lone working of the tutor. A new mixed group meeting was implemented within the personal tutoring structure, where two or more tutors collaborated to support their tutees in their ‘academic families’ group meeting. Semi-structured interviews with eight out of 47 Personal Tutors ranging from new teaching fellows to senior academic staff, revealed this collaborative approach was beneficial. Personal Tutors found reassurance in their approach to tutoring tutees and shared valuable insights. The academic family structure offered an opportunity to share facilitation, enabled getting to know other staff members and led to additional insights to their tutees from their paired tutor that could not be offered alone. However, with more participants to the meeting, scheduling and larger group sizes posed challenges. Overall, the academic family structure fostered a positive experience and the tutors valued sharing practice and building a tutor network. With time and learning from the experience it was felt this was an opportunity to develop a sense of belonging for both staff and students within the programme.

Author Biography

Wendy Leadbeater, University of Birmingham

Wendy Leadbeater is an Associate Professor in the Department of Biomedical Sciences, School of Infection, Inflammation and Immunology at the University of Birmingham. She is recognised as a Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy. Wendy leads the undergraduate Biomedical Science programme and is interested in the enhancement of student support and experience; she has had several roles aligned with Personal Academic Tutoring, including Senior Tutor in Biomedical Science at the University of Birmingham and Head of Student Support at Aston Medical School, Aston University. Wendy completed her Masters in Education on building communities of practice within the personal tutoring structure through academic families.

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