Professors’ Tutoring Skills: Validation of a Tool

Abstract

The new profile of a university professor, which places a greater focus on students’ learning and needs, is driving a new architecture for university tutorship. This study describes the validation of a scale to measure the tutoring skills of faculty members from the perspective of students. A total of 622 students from the University of Murcia participated in the research and confirmatory factor analysis was performed with the collected data. The results demonstrate the suitability of the theoretical model put forward, which comprises four dimensions (informing and adaptation; group management and support; educational and professional guidance; continuous monitoring of students), and show that the importance of these skills is perceived to be greater than the development of these same skills by professors (p < .05). This allows us to conclude by confirming the importance of furthering knowledge of these types of skills with a view to the continuous improvement of university tutoring.

Keywords

• teacher qualifications
• mentoring
• higher education