The Role of Disciplinary Expertise in Shaping Writing Tutorials

This study joins the debate over the effectiveness of generalist vs. specialist tutors by examining the role of disciplinary expertise in tutoring sessions. Analyses of student papers and session transcripts from tutorials with students from history and from political science classes, by faculty in the discipline as well as the authors, suggest a strong connection between a tutor's knowledge of writing in the discipline, the quality of a session's agenda, and a session's overall effectiveness. In sessions in which tutors lacked disciplinary expertise, tutors were both less able and less willing to identify global issues, evaluate and challenge the writer's point of view, ask effective questions, and draw general lessons. In sessions in which the tutor possessed disciplinary expertise, the opposite proved true. Disciplinary expertise did result in increased tutor directiveness, but this directiveness was used to facilitate rather than hinder effective collaboration. In the one session in which a tutor tried to appropriate the student's text, the responsible factor was identified as expertise in the subject matter rather than general disciplinary expertise. The article concludes with a discussion of implications for hiring tutors, for more effective training of generalist tutors, and for further research.