University tutoring: a space for personal, academic and profesional orientation in initial teacher training

Abstract

ABSTRACT

The purpose of this paper is to know the students’ perception of tutoring in a university setting, in order to emphasize its importance in their training and also in the quality of higher education. The sample consisted of 300 students of Early Childhood Education and Primary Education of the University of Córdoba. A questionnaire was produced to know the more frequent objectives addressed in tutoring hours, to what extent these objectives are developed from the point of view of students and which area of academic advice they are related with (personal, academic or vocational advice). In order to achieve this, we have developed a comparative analysis to detect the potential differences between the average scores of different groups. The results confirm that students perceive tutoring as a complement to their subjects and as a part of their learning process, and not as a place for receiving personal or professional advice. It follows the necessity of action plans to improve the tutoring tasks in professors.