Unteachableness?

[Jim Bell <jimb@unbc.edu>]

I'm wondering whether some tutors are unteachable.As a livelong educator, 
this is a perplexing and provocative notion for me. And a brand new one. 
It has arisen from three events that happened in January.

1. Two education professors from Hawaii wrote an article about their 
class intended  to teach prospective public school science teachers 
"reading in science" as part of 'reading across the curriculm.' Numerous 
students found the idea of helping kids learn to read science ludicrous: 
English was responsible for teaching reading. The profs suggested that 
maybe at that time in their careers, some science students were 
essentially unteachable in a reading methods course.

2. I'm am taking a management course (Org Behavior: Micro) and, in the 
first 20 hours of class, we have learned in considerable detail about 
problem solving interviews with employees: comfortable physical set up, 
careful body language, questioning and paraphrasing strategies to develop 
an atmosphere of trust etc. On Tuesday in a 3-hour role play, one group 
amazed me: they set up the room like an interrogation room (three of them 
facing a lone employee on the other side of a long desk; a solo glass of 
water), they played good cop/bad cop (one guy learning back, arms crossed 
etc. and one woman occasionally saying insincere comforting things to the 
victim), and they tried to intimidate the employee "into telling the 
truth." EXCUSE ME!!!! Realizing that the leader of the "management team" 
in the role play was very serious, I had to wonder how 20 hours of 
excellent instruction could go for nought.

3. Today I bumped into one of my tutors from days gone by. Although (here 
it comes!) I had trained her to do student-centered tutoring, although 
she had seen other tutors do it, although she had diagnosed her main 
problem as taking control of the students' papers, although I had 
arranged about 20 hours of extra tutor training (articles, cases etc.), 
she candidly said that by the end of that semester she was still doing 
tutor-centered tutoring.

It is easy to make this notion look stupid. On the one hand, nobody is 
unteachable. On the other, it is impossible to teach some specifics to some 
person under some particular circumstances. But what I'm wondering 
is--given writing centers' limited resources for training, given the way 
tutors are chosen, given the contexts in which they work,etc., is it a 
useful notion for us to have that some tutors are unteachable?

Jim Bell				Ph. (604) 960-6365
Learning Skills Centre			Fax (604) 960-6330
University of Northern BC		email jimb@unbc.edu
3333 University Way
Prince George, BC
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