Abstract:

A proposed paper presents academic Tutoring and Coaching as innovative methods of personalized teaching and learning, aimed at maintaining/preserving and developing high quality education at the contemporary university. Both methods constitute a didactic offer which apparently seems contradictory with the assumptions of Higher Education (HE) reforms, conducted recently in Poland and in Europe and directed at marketisation and commodification of education. This impression might be caused by the fact that Tutoring and Coaching refer back to the rooted in the Anglo-Saxon tradition of individualized teaching by a Tutor or Coach, who cares for a complex intellectual, cognitive and psycho-social development of his/her student. The idea of re-introducing elements of personalized education in the formula of Tutoring, Coaching and even Mentoring occur in progressive academic milieus as an alternative to purely pragmatic and depersonalized relationship between students and teachers. They evoke curiosity among academic researchers, as they get back to a unique relationship between Master and Pupil, being per se a primary form of reciprocal stimulation of passion, interests and exchange of knowledge between two Subjects.

As both discussed methods are directed at raising the efficacy of a teaching/learning process, they shall also be analyzed in the context of restructuring educational systems and changing requirements as for human/intellectual capital. When professionally applied, Tutoring and Coaching stand a chance to become the best tools to preserve the elite level of HE for those who are ready to face an intellectual challenge and continue their personal development instead of only getting a diploma to fit the labor market. In this approach, Tutoring and Coaching turn into the measurable instruments to raise the quality of HE, but also as a means to choose a career path with full potentials in mind.

In the proposed presentation, general features of Tutoring shall be compared with the assumptions of Coaching. The purpose of this juxtaposition shall be highlighting the points at which both approaches complement each other in order to provide a student with optimal conditions not only to widen his declarative or pragmatic knowledge, but also to develop his/her cognitive and emotional attitudes. The latter constitute the basis for successful learning and knowledge processing. Thus, Coaching shall be presented as an effective way of drawing students to their highest cognitive potentials by means of awakening their self-reflection over own goals, aptitudes and weaknesses meaningful to their learning process. Reaching this level of reflectivity is indispensable to successively build their knowledge capital, which in turn takes place in the personalized didactic dialogue with a Tutor: a leader, a coordinator and a source of professional knowledge in one.

What shall be presented is also the example of good practice. The paper shall introduce an educational project inititated at the university of Gdańsk in March 2014 and dedicated to the academic staff members of the faculty of languages. The project assumes an intensive training course in academic tutoring, followed by direct application of tutorials by project members in the course of two semesters of 2014/2015 academic year. This initiative is supposed to promote this personalized method of teaching in the academia in order to serve the student as much as possible.

Keywords:

Personalized education, tutoring, coaching, development, quality education, higher education efficacy.