Insights on Interviewing

This weeks readings focused on conferences and the interview process. Of the three I found "Power and Talk" the most the most intriguing. In this chapter from Between Talk and Teaching Black explains the many ways in which professors, often without realizing it, take control of the conversation during conferences and make it difficult if not impossible to make meaningful contribution to the conversation surrounding their writing. While the teachers mean well and only want the student to do well, they undercut the students point of view and style in many ways. By over praising one student and complaining about how they "can't read this shit" to another creates an imbalance of power between the teacher and the student in conferences. It creates a barrier in the relationship that makes the writer feel like their ideas and perspective are not as important as the instructors. The point is this: if we are to have an effective conference we have to change the way we look at teaching. Especially the relationship between student/teacher and tutor/tutee.

Brown's "Circular Questioning" and "Interviews and Interviewing Techniques" took a more psychological approach to the topic. While these articles didn't deal with the same type of meeting they both explored the different approaches to the interviewing process. Brown's article  emphasizes the correlation between one person's behavior and anothers and the way we think about human problems. He also talks about two factor questioning which he explains is used to narrow or broaden focus as needed. He also goes on to explain problem definition, sequence of interaction, comparison/classification, and intervention stages of the therapeutic process. It is not hard to see how some of these techniques can be used in tutoring, particularly in respect to the writing process.

Similarly, Madill's piece delves into the mapping of a successful semi-structured interview. Setting goals, staying on track, and letting the interviewee do most of the talking without leading or prompting from the interviewer. Although Madill reiterates the importance of open ended questions she admits that for those of us just starting out it can feel awkward and clunky to ask them and that throwing in a few short or even closed questions at the beginning can ease both parties into the strangeness of the interview process. I can see the usefulness of these as well as many of the other techniques discussed in the article as applied to peer tutoring.