This document provides an overview of one-to-one learning development work. It discusses establishing structure and goals for sessions, using frameworks like the Five Ps to understand students' needs, and employing different roles like listener, coach, mentor and teacher depending on the situation. Effective practices include contracting with students, using open-ended questions to facilitate understanding, and closing sessions by summarizing learning and setting actions. The document also addresses theoretical foundations, professional values like inclusion and collaboration, and challenges like ensuring confidentiality.

1. ONE TO ONE WORK
IN LEARNING DEVELOPMENT
Dr Helen Webster
Head of the Writing Development Centre
Newcastle University

2. INTRODUCTIONS
 What is your name?
 Where do you work?
 What questions or issues would you like today’s event to
address?

3. OVERVIEW OF THE DAY
 Learning Development Work
 The Roots of LD
 Expert Knowledge, Theory and
Values
 Structuring the One to One
 The shape of the one to one
 Opening and Contracting
 The 5 Ps
 Closing
 Keeping records
 One to One Strategies and
Techniques
 Four Roles Integrative Model
 Listener
 Coach
 Mentor
 Teacher
 Working with text
 Barriers and Boundaries

4. THE LEARNING DEVELOPMENT ONE TO ONE

5. KNOW YOURSELF
What kind of student were you?
Reflect on your beliefs, habits, attitudes, experience, preferences, strengths and weaknesses as a student.
When working with students, how might this affect:
 What you see or don’t see
 How you react and what you feel
 The causes you attribute and assumptions you make
 The judgements you implicitly apply
 The guidance you recommend
 Whose interests you act in

6. THE ROOTS OF LEARNING DEVELOPMENT
Learning
Development
EAP
SpLD
Counselling
Staff
development
Researcher
development
InfoLit
librarians
Subject
teaching
Student
advice and
guidance
Learning
Technology
Postgrad
research
FE and WP
Profession or community of
practice?
• Expertise and knowledge
• Theory
• Ethics and Values
• Practices and skills

7. THE ‘WHAT’ OF LEARNING DEVELOPMENT
 An understanding of how students learn
 An understanding of the curriculum, or what students learn*
 An understanding of how learning is articulated and
assessed
How do we acquire this?

8. THE THEORY: WHAT ARE WE TRYING TO ACHIEVE IN A 1-2-1?
 Study Skills
 Academic Socialisation
 Academic Literacies
Lea and Street (1998). ‘Student Writing in Higher Education: An Academic Literacies Approach’

9. PRACTICAL IMPLICATIONS OF THEORY
Ongoing debates you’ll pick up on LDHEN list and the conference:
 Is there any such thing as a ‘study skill’?
 Can skills really be ‘transferable’?
 Is generic work helpful or even possible, or should it always be embedded in the
discipline?
 Can effective LD work be bolt-on or should it be part of the curriculum?
 Should we offer pre-sessional or induction sessions?
 Is it useful to offer initial diagnostic tests of all students?
 Should we just be working with the weakest students?
 What do we serve? The student or learning? In whose interests are we working?

10. THE VALUES OF LEARNING DEVELOPMENT
How do you react to these views?
“Study skills support is really helpful for the weaker students, to stop them falling
behind”
“For one reason or another, students lack these skills when they come to uni, and
training is needed to give them the skills they need.”
“I never had any study skills support when I was a student – I was expected to pick
this stuff up by osmosis!”
“Academic writing and study has particular conventions and norms which just need to
be learned”.
“Study skills are important transferable skills. Every student should have a course of
class of study skills as well as their subject.”

11. PROFESSIONAL VALUES- WHAT CAN WE BORROW?
•From teaching – student-centred, constructivist
•From counselling – empathy, unconditional positive regard,
congruence, confidentiality
•From guidance work – neutrality, impartiality
•From EAP/Careers - authenticity
•From Disability/SpLD - inclusivity, social justice
•General professional - physical boundaries and spaces,
punctuality and preparedness

12. LEARNING DEVELOPMENT VALUES
 What values would you say you ‘profess’ as a learning
developer?
 Which are the core values?
 Choose one value. How is this practically manifested in
your one to one work?

13. ALDINHE’S VALUES
 Working alongside students to make sense of and get the most out of HE
learning
 Making HE inclusive through emancipatory practice, partnership working and
collaboration
 Adopting and sharing effective LD practice with the HE community
 Commitment to scholarly approach and research related to LD
 Critical self-reflection, on-going learning and a commitment to professional
development

14. ETHICS
How much harm could you do?
Deliberately Negligently Unintentionally
Conflicts of interests

15. STRUCTURING THE ONE TO ONE

16. OPENING THE ONE TO ONE
“…………..”
Write on a post-it note your usual opening words to the student.
 How do they reflect professional values?
 What expectations do they give rise to in the student?

17. EMBODYING OUR VALUES
NON-VERBAL ELEMENTS
Draw your one to one working environment.
Look at it from the student’s perspective:
◦ What do they see, how do they move within and use the space?
◦ How does the space support the aims and values of LD one to one
work?
◦ Does it hinder our aims and values?
◦ Could the space be improved?
As a group, design your ideal one to one environment

18. STRUCTURING THE PROCESS
How do we structure a learning development interaction?
 What models might we borrow from other professions?
 What might we need to adapt or create?

19. CONTRACTING
 What does the student need to be made aware of for the one-to-
one session to go effectively?
 If you don’t make them aware, what might the impact be?
 How and when is this best conveyed?

20. WHAT’S GOING ON?
List the 3 most common requests you hear.
Phrase them as students present them to you e.g.
“I need help cutting my draft - it’s way over the wordcount”
 How often are students able to accurately and precisely
identify the issue?
 Why is that?

21. WHO BRINGS WHAT?
Student
Learning
Developer
Lecturer
Learning
objectives
Expertise
Meaning

22. FORMULATION AND CO-CONSTRUCTING MEANING
Do you hear voices that no one else can
hear?
“Yes.”

23. FORMULATION AND CO-CONSTRUCTING MEANING
 I have really good hearing
 I talk to myself in my head
 My flat’s walls are really thin
 I live with my grandmother who’s deaf.
 I pray. I find it comforting.
 I listen to music on headphones a lot
 It’s ok, I can hear that too, it’s not just you
 Sorry, I thought you were being metaphorical! No, not literally.

24. FORMULATION AND CO-CONSTRUCTING MEANING
“I’m not very good at writing”

25. THE FIVE PS OF LEARNING DEVELOPMENT
1.Presenting Problem
2.Pertinent factors
a) Conscious
b) Unconscious
3.Perception of the task
4.Process
5.Product

26. WHY DON’T STUDENTS TAKE ACTION?
WHY DO THEY KEEP COMING BACK?
 Fear of failure (or success?)
 Risk avoidance
 Dependence
 Too many action points - overwhelmed
 Action points not concrete enough
 Insecure understanding of concepts
 Action points not sufficiently ‘owned’ by the student
 Action points not perceived as transferable strategies
 Points forgotten by the student!
 Progress takes too long

27. THE 5 P’S: DIAGNOSTIC TOOL OR COLLABORATIVE FORMULATION?
 Where and how has the tutor drawn on the 5 Ps?
 What is the impact of their application of the 5 Ps?
 How might you make this interaction a collaborative formulation
rather than a diagnosis?
 Re-write the tutor’s dialogue as a formulation

28. CLOSING A ONE TO ONE SESSION
Picture the student walking out the door, following a successful one-
to-one.
 What is the ideal outcome?
 By the end of the session
 Following the session
 What might you do at the close of a one to one to help ensure
this?

29. CLOSING A ONE TO ONE SESSION
 Signal closure “we’ve got about 10 minutes before we have to finish, so….”
 Assessment of learning – progress from the start of session
and extent to which needs were met
 Summarise and check learning
 Summarise and check actions to be taken
 Praise and encouragement
 Review unmet needs and future work (re-contracting)
 Referral
 Dealing with Doorknob Disclosures….
Who does this –
the LDer or the student?

30. SHAPE OF THE LEARNING DEVELOPMENT ONE TO ONE
Welcome and
rapport
building
Contracting
Exploration via
5 Ps
Working with
specifics
Developing
understanding
‘Meta-cognition’
Assessment of
learning
Summarising
learning and
actions to be
taken
Establishing the
query
Identifying
strategies

31. KEEPING RECORDS
Setting aside what you think the tutor should/should not have
done in the session itself:
 What is helpful in these records? To whom and in what way?
 What is inappropriate and why?
 How would you achieve what’s needed in a more appropriate way?
What Dos and Don’ts can we derive from these examples?

32. CONFIDENTIALITY AND DATA PROTECTION
 What confidentiality policy (formal or informal) does your service have?
 Who can information be shared with and under what circumstances?
 Data Protection Act 1998* states that any personal data held must be:
 Used for limited, specifically stated purposes
 Used in a way that is adequate, relevant and not excessive
 Accurate
 Kept safe and secure
 Given to the individual it concerns, at their request
*note upcoming changes to this legislation

33. STRATEGIES AND TECHNIQUES

34. WHAT ROLES DO WE PLAY?
On each table are a number of ‘hats’ which we might
wear during our work.
 What is the distinction between each role?
 How (far) might each apply to LD work?
 Can you add any? Would you reject any?

35. A HIERARCHY?
Which do you identify
most closely with? Which
do you identify least with?
Organise the roles in a
hierarchy

36. DECIDING ROLES: AN INTEGRATIVE MODEL
KNOWLEDGE AND AGENCY
Mentor Listener
Teacher Coach
Tutor
Knowledge
Tutor
Agency
Student
Agency
Student
Knowledge

37. THE LISTENER
Active listening with minimal input, to help students articulate, clarify, value and come to
terms with what they are thinking or feeling.
 Useful when: the student implicitly knows what they’re trying to achieve, and has
everything they need to achieve it, but needs a sounding board to help them feel
valued, clarify their own thinking and accept it.
 Skills needed: active listening to what they say and what they don’t say (incl body
language), minimal verbal and non-verbal encouragement, reflecting back and
mirroring
 Example situations:
 Untangling and refining their argument in an assignment
 Dealing with challenging new ideas or feelings about study, e.g. threshold concepts
 Pitfalls: may become directionless

38. LISTENING
Partner activity:
Listen to your partner talk through something they’re finding challenging or tricky in
their one to one work.
You may only:
 Use body language to encourage
 Use verbal prompts (uh huh, ok, I see, really?, go on…)
 Mirror their language – repeat words or phrases (you can change the intonation)
 Reflect what you’re seeing or hearing (“I can see you’re frustrated”)

39. LISTENING
 Those who talked: how did it feel? What did you feel you gained?
 Those who listened: how did it feel? What did you feel your input
was?
 Those who observed: what did you see?

40. THE COACH
A goal-focussed approach to helping students identify, refine and address their
own aims, drawing on their own knowledge and resources
 Useful when: the student has the necessarily knowledge, explicitly or
implicitly, of themselves and their subject, but isn’t sure how to move forward
 Skills needed: open questioning to help clarify, explore, challenge, focus,
decide and plan
 Example situations:
 Narrowing down a dissertation topic, cutting out sections
 Managing revision
 Pitfalls: student may assume you have, or are looking for, specific answers

41. COACHING MODELS
 GROW:
 Goal
 Reality
 Options
 Will
 OSKAR:
 Outcome
 Scaling
 Know-how
 Affirm and Action
 Review
 CLEAR:
 Contracting
 Listening
 Exploring
 Action
 Review

42. COACHING IN LEARNING DEVELOPMENT
 What kinds of open questions might you use in a learning
development one to one?
 Scenario: a student who doesn’t do well in exams and is not sure how
to go about revision.
 Beware!
 Leading questions
 Closed questions
 Multiple or complex questions
 Student anxiety (clarify your role)

43. THE MENTOR
Drawing on your experience as a senior member of the academic community (as learning
developer, former student, or other professional roles in HE) to help contextualise a student’s
experience and inform their thinking.
 Useful when: the student needs to draw on experienced outside perspectives to make sense
of their learning context and the implications of their decisions
 Skills needed: interpreting academic culture and convention, modelling study approaches or
reader responses, sharing experience to normalise and reassure, provide additional
information about a context to aid decision making, reflective detachment
 Example situations:
 Negotiating and developing their authorial voice and style
 Decision-making and understanding the implications
 Understanding how a reader responds to a text
 Pitfalls: student may perceive your input as too directive or authoritative

44. MENTORING
The unspoken Question:
“What would you do, how would you do it, if you were
me?”

45. MENTORING IN LEARNING DEVELOPMENT
What experience can we draw on as mentors?
Need to
have
Nice to
have
Not
appropriate
or relevant

46. MENTORING: THE GOLDEN RULES
What are the dangers of disclosing our own experience?
Appropriate Inappropriate

47. MENTORING SCENARIOS
 “Which essay question should I pick?”
 “What structure would work best for this essay?”
 “How do I know if I’m being critical enough in my writing?”
 “Is my style academic enough?”

48. MENTORING: STRATEGIES
Modelling
 Experience drawn on: senior member of academic
community, writer and editor of own work
 Technique: Articulate your* thinking process and involve
students in weighing up the options at each stage
*clarify the perspective you’re drawing on

49. THE TEACHER
Determining what the student needs to know, imparting that knowledge through
explanation and setting rehearsal tasks, and assessing whether it has been learned.
 Useful when: the student is not in a position to figure out the knowledge they need
or to know if they have got it right
 Skills needed: explanation, use of questions to scaffold and assess, constructing
tasks to aid understanding
 Example situations:
 How to reference
 Grammar
 Pitfalls: you may overuse this mode, underestimating what the student can bring

50. TEACHING IS NOT….

51. TEACHER
 Establishing existing knowledge
 Delivering learning
 Scaffolding
 Eliciting and assessing new learning

52. VYGOTSKY: ZONE OF PROXIMAL DEVELOPMENT
BRUNER: SCAFFOLDING
Learner can
do
independently
ZPD: Learner
can do with
guidance
Learner
cannot do
Scaffolding

53. TEACHING
 What is the minimum explanation you need to give, so the learner is able to
construct their own understanding?
 What might you ask them to do, to encourage them to construct their own
understanding?
 How to use commas
 How to paraphrase without plagiarising
 What is meant by ‘critical analysis’ in terms of marking criteria

54. ONE TO ONE ANALYSIS
Setting aside what you would/would not have done in the session,
Analyse the transcript of an excerpt from a learning development one to one.
 What roles does the tutor adopt?
 How do they explore the 5 Ps?
 How are the values practised?
*With thanks to Katherine Stapleford, Elizabeth Caldwell and Amanda Tinker for allowing us to draw on their research. Transcripts from K. Stapleford, E. Caldwell
and A. Tinker (2017) ‘Talking academic writing: a conversation analysis of One to One Tutorials’. Conference presentation at ETAW.

55. HOW TO SAY….
Directive Student-centred
What you should do is…
The reason this is happening is…
Why did(n’t) you do that?
No, that’s wrong.
The problem is…
Have you tried…?
Look, here, you’ve…
Are you sure…?

56. WORKING WITH TEXT
“I’ve brought my essay…”
 Why does learning development involve working with
writing so often?
 What is the learning developers role, regarding student
writing?

57. WORKING WITH TEXT
In pairs: each partner has a different text.
 If your service reads text before the session, talk your partner through what
you would do with the text before the one to one, and how you would use it in
the one to one.
 If your service does not look at text before the session, work with your partner
as if they were the student who had brought the text.
Feed back: what did you learn from observing your partner?
 How did they handle the text?
 How did they raise points and offer feedback?
 How did they encourage student input?

58. OVERCOMING BARRIERS TO LEARNING
You each have an example of a challenging behaviour which
you might encounter in a one to one: the issue and an
example of what it might sound like.
For each case, consider:
 What might the causes of this behaviour be?
 What might happen if you don’t try to address it?
 What strategies might you use to address it?
 How might you phrase this?

59. BOUNDARIES – WHERE TO DRAW THE LINE?
 Which bits can you help with in the session?
 What must you absolutely not do?
 Where are the danger zones where you might be tempted to go beyond your
role?

60. BOUNDARIES
1. A student discloses that she has been sexually assaulted and isn’t sleeping, but doesn’t want the police or counselling involved.
She just wants to get the exams out of the way and leave for the summer vacation, but finds talking to you about it reassuring in
the meantime, and comforting that someone knows.
2. A student is in his fourth year of his PhD, and struggling to complete due to perfectionism. He makes very slow progress with his
writing, as he can’t move on til he’s satisfied with how a section is written. He is anxious that he’s not read enough yet, or will
miss something important. He’s stressed and is now avoiding his supervisor, and keeps coming to see you.
3. A student is working on his Masters dissertation, but his project is not progressing well due to issues with supervision. Since his
proposal was accepted, his supervisor is pushing him to change his project to one closer to his own research interests. He feels
he doesn’t have the interest, time, resources or skills to change it so radically, but his faith in his original project is undermined by
his supervisor’s feedback. He feels trapped, and that his Masters is in jeopardy.
4. An international student needs her essays proofreading, but says she has made no UK friends who could look at it as native
speakers. She keeps coming back to see you to ‘look at her writing’ but sessions are largely becoming smalltalk. She tells you
she’s feeling lonely and isolated in the UK because of her poor English.
1. A mature student has been to see you a number of times, with similar issues around structuring and writing clearly. Some parts
of his writing seem a little garbled, but he can’t see it. There has been little improvement, and you wonder if he has a specific
learning difficulty. He says that one of his teachers at school had suggested this, but he doesn’t want to be referred to the
disability service or explore it further due to the stigma associated with being thick.

61. BOUNDARIES
Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs
Transcendence
Self-actualisation
Esteem
Social belonging
Safety
Physiological
We should take these
into account in our
guidance, but we can’t
resolve them
We can work to
develop these in the
context of study

62. REFERRAL
 Draw a map of the services you might need to refer to in your institution.
 What is their remit and what support can they provide?
 What forms does their provision take?
 How does the student access them?
 How might you phrase a referral with the student?
 How do you need to describe it, what information do they need, to make them feel comfortable?
 They need to feel confident they know what to do
 They need to feel normal and not judged
 They need to feel that they aren’t being fobbed off
 With a partner, rehearse any referrals you are uncomfortable with.

63. RESOURCES
 Mental Health First Aid:
 2 days training course https://mhfaengland.org/
 Keeping Mental Health in Mind:
 online learning packages https://www.cwmt.org.uk/e-learning

64. WHAT WILL YOU TAKE AWAY?
What new strategies or insights will you
take away from today?

65. CONTACT
ALDinHE Professional Development Working Group
 https://aldinheprofdev.wordpress.com/
Dr Helen Webster
 Head of the Writing Development Centre, Newcastle University
 Email: helen.webster@ncl.ac.uk
 Twitter: @scholastic_rat
 Blog: https://rattusscholasticus.wordpress.com/
Materials will be made available on my blog and ultimately on the PDWG website

66. THANKS
 ALDinHE’s Professional Development Working Group and Steering
Committee
 Katherine Stapleford, Elizabeth Caldwell and Amanda Tinker for One to One
transcripts
 Anna Judd-Yelland for the Peer Observation pro forma
 Everyone who contributed to the Crowdsourced Annotated Bibliography
 Our host universities
 Critical friends: Sandra Sinfield, Maddie Mossman, Emma Coonan