POWER-NET: academic tutoring in Poland as the object of research, institutional policy and reflective practice of tutors

Abstract

Academic institutions and their professional communities live presently in the times of constant change. Beyond numerous, official amendments within state regulations, also quality and pace of educational change undergo transformations. We observe the change of artefacts and contexts of socio-cultural demands which call for the necessity to reformulate good practices and competencies required in education. The paper is planned to highlight several aspects of change, considered by the author as sensitive to the possibility to personalize academic education: institutional, professional, scientific and simply humane. The intention is to provide a critical look upon academic tutoring and its potentials from the perspective of an academic tutor and tutor’s trainer, as well as a researcher on education. The net of arguments, following the title of this paper, shall be outstretched between research-based, policy-based and the very practice-based nodal points, with my full awareness of the limitations that my insight carries due to the qualitative rather than quantitative type of the presented research. Nevertheless, the paper should bring down the picture of a polyphony of powers that make tutoring a very special, demanding, but top quality form of academic education, which should be supported, recommended and popularized among teachers in order for them to reach their academic excellence.