The Future of Education

This study investigated teaching and learning strategies used by peer tutors in a Bachelor of Oral Health (BOH) tutorial class that enhanced an active and engaged learning process. This study was conducted on tutorial classes that were linked to a BOH high impact module in which many students were failing. The tutorial classes were led by peer tutors who were senior students in the Faculty of Dentistry. Tutorial classes refer to small group teaching which allows for one-on-one interaction and increased student engagement with a peer tutor. This study focused specifically on the tutors’ unconscious use of semantic waves as a teaching and learning technique to unpack difficult BOH concepts.  Semantic waves refer to building knowledge through the construction of recurring up and down movements in the semantic gravity (context-dependent) and the semantic density (condensation of meaning) of knowledge. The construction of knowledge moves from the abstract to the concrete and vice-versa. This qualitative study made use of semi structured one-on-one and focus group interviews to collect data from the two BOH tutors and students in the tutorial class. The aim of the study was to investigate effective pedagogical strategies used by the tutors that could enhance students’ understanding of abstract oral health concepts. The findings revealed that using semantic waves did assist students with their understanding of difficult concepts. The study also highlighted that the tutors unconscious use of creating ‘semantic waves’ to transform abstract knowledge into everyday particle examples seemed a natural way of teaching and engaging with students. The tutors had the ability to use the semantic wave technique to build knowledge in oral health concepts but did not have the skills to move knowledge and meaning-making up the semantic wave to cumulative knowledge-building. It was evident that the tutors were unable to engage students in critical thinking and reconnecting with abstract concepts. The outcome from this study is valuable, as the findings have resulted in the restructuring of the institutional tutor-training workshop to include semantic-waves as a pedagogical strategy to improve student learning. This strategy will explicitly raise tutors’ awareness about the importance of the interplay between knowledge structures and the value of unpacking and repacking conceptual terms to bring about effective and situated learning.

Keywords: Tutors, teaching strategies, semantic waves; 

References:
[1] Maton, K. 2013. Making semantic waves: a key to cumulative knowledge building. Linguistics and Education, 24(1): pp.8–22