Publisher's Synopsis
NOW IN 2008 SECOND EDITION
Edited by David Palfreyman
With Contributions from: James Clark, Richard Dawkins, Robin Lane Fox, Richard Mash, Peter Mirfield, Roger Pearson, Penny Probert, Alan Ryan, Suzanne Shale, Andrew Smith, and Emma Smith
The Oxford Tutorial has an almost mystic, cult status. It is Oxford’s ‘premium product’ for which, via college academic fees, it commands ‘a premium price’. But the Tutorial has its critics, both within and beyond Oxford. Is it an anachronism in the mass higher education system of the twenty-first century? Is the traditional tutoring of Oxford’s undergraduates now too labour intensive and too expensive a burden for the University and its colleges as State funding of higher education declines? Do the dons want to escape the heavy burden of twelve hours per week of tutorial teaching and redirect valuable time into research as the key factor in achieving the plaudits of a successful academic career? Is the Tutorial a sacred cow to which Oxford pays mere lip-service as it quietly shifts to ‘small group teaching’?
Or is it a pedagogical gem, the jewel in Oxford’s crown, to be preserved at all costs as the best way to challenge, stimulate and truly educate Oxford’s high-quality ‘young’ in the crucial ‘lifelong-learning’ skill of sound analysis and critical thinking? If Oxford lets the Tutorial wither, will it be failing future generations of talented undergraduates who need the intensity of the demanding tutorial teaching methodology to ensure their intellectual resources best serve them in their careers and in turn Society? Moreover, how does the Oxford Tutorial fit with the concept of a Liberal Education, and anyway just what is higher education?
This little book brings together experienced Oxford Dons from across the academic disciplines who discuss their personal belief in and commitment to the Tutorial as an utterly essential element in all Oxford’s degree subjects. It is hoped that students new to Oxford will find these essays helpful in sharing with them, as ‘the consumers’, what the Dons, as ‘the producers’, are trying to achieve, while stressing that the whole process is both ‘a team effort’ and also one that is not fixed in format since it allows tutor and tutee to vary the nature of the Tutorial to optimal effect. Thus, it can be at the same time a process which falls apart if either undergraduate or teacher short-changes the tutorial experience.
CONTENTS
1 The Oxford Tutorial: Sacred Cow or Pedagogical Gem?
2 A Liberal Education: and that includes the Sciences!
3 Teaching Law, Learning Law: Growing Up Intellectually
4 Modern Linguists as Multi-taskers
5 Evolution in Biology Tutoring?
6 Tutorials in Greats and History: The Socratic Method
7 Engineering the Tutorial Experience
8 English: A Shared Enterprise
9 Perfection in Politics and Philosophy
10 Tutorial Teaching in Economics
11 The Oxford Tutorial in the Context of Theory on Student Learning
12 Been there; Got the T-shirt: The perspective of a recent survivor of the tutorial system
13 The Oxford Tutorial: The Students’ Perspective
14 ‘Of Studies in a University’
