How Tutoring Works: Six Steps to Grow Motivation and Accelerate Student Learning

Build students’ confidence and competence with tutoring strategies that spark meaningful, accelerated learning. 

Tutoring is much more than telling students information. Effective tutoring begins with the strong and caring relationship a tutor establishes with a learner to build trust, fuel motivation, and drive critical learning. 

How Tutoring Works distills the complexity of strategic moves effective tutors make to build students’ confidence and competence. Harnessing decades of Visible Learning® research, this easy to read, eye-opening guide details the six essential components of any effective tutoring intervention—establishing a relationship and credibility, addressing student confidence and challenges, setting shared goals, helping a student learn how to learn, teaching and learning content, and establishing a habit of deliberate practice. Indispensable for any educator who intervenes with students, this rich resource includes: 

• Examples of impactful tutoring conversations, including what to say and what not to say when building a relationship with a learner.
• Specific approaches to use when establishing credibility, addressing challenges to learning, leveraging the relevance of knowledge, setting goals, and ensuring practice.  
• Learning strategies, with effect size, for teaching and learning content, including specific strategies for improving reading, writing, and mathematics. 
• Tips and tools for helping students develop powerful cognitive, metacognitive, and affective study skills. 
• Resources and advice for establishing an effective and transformational tutoring program.

Done well, tutoring can repair a student’s damaged relationship to learning, address unrealized potential, and alter the course of a young person’s life. A strong and nurturing relationship between tutor and learner is key. 

Nancy Frey is a professor of educational leadership at San Diego State University and a teacher leader at Health Sciences High and Middle College. Her published titles include The Courage to Learn, The Art and Science of Coaching, How Scaffolding Works, and The Illustrated Guide to Visible Learning. Frey is a credentialed special educator, reading specialist, and administrator in California and learns from teachers and students every day.

Douglas Fisher is a professor and chair of educational leadership at San Diego State University and a teacher leader at Health Sciences High and Middle College. Previously, Fisher was an early intervention teacher and elementary school educator. In 2022, he was inducted into the Reading Hall of Fame by the Literacy Research Association. He has published numerous articles on reading and literacy, leadership, and curriculum design, as well as books such as Your Introduction to PLC+, Welcome to Teaching, How Feedback Works, Teaching Reading, and RIGOR Unveiled. Fisher loves being an educator and hopes to share that passion with others.

John Almarode is a professor of education at James Madison University. He was awarded the inaugural Sarah Miller Luck Endowed Professorship in 2015 and received an Outstanding Faculty Award from the State Council for Higher Education in Virginia in 2021. John started as a mathematics and science teacher in Augusta County, Virginia. John has written multiple books, book chapters, papers, and reports. His collaborative work with colleagues on what works best in teaching and learning includes How Tutoring Works, Visible Learning in Early Childhood, and How Learning Works, all with Corwin Press.