Tutoring in higher education: Concepts and practices

An important topic in itself, tutoring assumes even greater importance in the light of the plans to implement a single academic model throughout the European Union. In this paper we examine some of the tutoring experiments currently being implemented in Portuguese universities, and the framework within which tutoring operates in a higher education context. The various kinds of tutoring – mentoring, curricular tutoring, academic tutoring and training-related tutoring – are implemented by higher educational institutions in their attempts to find a response to the needs diagnosed among students. Due to its scope and the possibilities for intervention it provides, tutoring is characteristically diverse in its manifestations. We go on to conclude that the diverse tutoring programmes and practices have been put together piecemeal as part of the concrete practices of each institution, in accordance with the characteristics of the students and the context, both of which point to the importance of, and recognition of, the need for training on the part of teaching staff, and the need for greater clarification of the role of the tutor.