Scores for each of the core tutor behaviours, social congruence, subject-matter expertise or cognitive congruence, were computed.
The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationship between students' perception of overall tutor effectiveness, particular tutor behaviours, clinical qualifications and academic appointment.
Therefore, rather than to relate tutor behaviours to the outcome of PBL, the aim of this study was to investigate the effects of tutor-related behaviours on student learning during the PBL process.
The questions were crafted with the intention of gauging three core tutor behaviours, namely, social congruence, subject expertise and cognitive congruence.
The problem statement is presented in Appendix A. Tutor behaviours were assessed by asking students to complete a questionnaire adapted from Schmidt and Moust (1995).
A significant correlation between students' perception of tutor effectiveness and a number of tutor behaviours, including those related to both knowledge of subject matter and facilitation skill has previously been documented [ 41].
As far as we are aware, there have been no studies which have specifically explored the relationship between students' perception of overall effectiveness, particular tutor behaviours, clinical qualifications and academic appointment.
Gijselaers [ 17] and Dolmans et al. [ 18] did investigate the influence of context variables on tutor performance in a PBL-curriculum and showed that the quality of the cases, the structure of PBL courses, the students' level of prior knowledge, and the level of functioning in tutorial groups influenced tutors' behaviour in tutorials.
All of the individual measures of the ITQ (empathy, confidence, narcissism and aloofness) correlate with some tutor assessed behaviours of individuals in year 1 and in year 2 (p < .05 to p <0.001) and, in general, the correlations are in the direction that is expected intuitively, for example narcissism and aloofness are negatively correlated with positive behaviours.
Which of these tutor-related behaviours are most influential on student learning?
