the very programs designed to address social inequality inadvertently reproduce it, ‘unresolved tensions tugged continually at the fabric of institutional good intentions’ (DiPardo 1992, 126)” (Grimm 69; also see Clark “Perspectives,” 46). Ironically, listening, or allowing the student to talk a little more during one-to-ones to enable them to supposedly be more in control of the tutorial discourse, is one of—perhaps the most fundamental of—nondirective strategies.
Carol Severino, drawing on Ede and Lunsford for her 1992 essay “Rhetorically Analyzing Collaborations,” associates directive tutoring with hierarchical collaboration and nondirective tutoring with dialogic collaboration (recall Carino’s words above). But her analysis of two conferences from two different tutors with the same student points perhaps more emphatically toward our assumptions of what the ideal tutoring session is supposed to sound like. The student is Joe, an older African American returning student taking a class entitled “Race and Ethnicity in Our Families and Lives.” Severino analyzes the transcripts of sessions between Joe and Henry, a high school teacher in his thirties working on his MA in English, and Joe and Eddy, a younger freshman with less teaching experience. Like the sessions that DiPardo and Grimm analyze above, Henry uses his teacherly authority, from the very start of the conference, by asking closed or leading questions that control the flow of the rest of the tutorial. In contrast, during the session between Joe and Eddy, Eddy starts off right away asking Joe open-ended questions like how he feels about the paper, and where he wants to go from there. For Severino, this sets a more conversational, peer-like tone that carries through the rest of the tutorial. Although obviously privileging the nondirective/dialogic approach, Severino concludes by asserting that it is difficult to say which of the above sessions was necessarily “better.” The problem with Severino’s analysis, however, is that we do not get a clear enough picture of exactly what was going on during the tutorial. As with Fannie above, we do not know how Joe felt about the interaction. Perhaps he found greater value in Henry’s more directive approach. Further, we do not know what stage of the draft Joe is in in either tutorial (information that might have contributed to the level of directive or nondirective instruction). Nonetheless, the value in Severino’s overall argument involves her urging those who prepare tutors to avoid prescriptive tutoring dictums that do not take into consideration varying assignment tasks, rhetorical situations, and student personalities and goals—the “always” and “don’t” that can close off avenues for authentic listening and conversation.
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