Hans Edlund
Mathematics & Spanish, Class of 2025
From Bentonville, Arkansas
The Transformative Tutoring Initiative is a research initiative at the Jeannine Rainbolt College of Education that gives high-dosage tutoring to local Oklahoma students. Every two students are assigned to one tutor, who are OU students like Hans Edlund, to study how students can grow academically in mathematics, a subject that can be one of the leading factors if a student earns a high school degree.
Read Hans's Q&A below to learn more about his contributions to this research.
What does collecting research look like in the Transformative Tutoring Initiative?
I am a math tutor who provides lessons for two high school students. I am tasked with reporting my minutes of tutoring and my reflections on a weekly basis, which covers my experience with my two students and what I am teaching them. These reflections are surveys that gather information on how the students are doing, keeping a log of the resources I used, and what challenged me as a tutor. This has led me to notice an exponential change in learning growth through intentional teaching to a lower number of students. When we engage students through answering their questions, completing activities, or giving them different content to consume, both the students' learning and their desire to learn math has increased, and this is because of how we can help them personally develop their math skills.
What are some insights that the Transformative Tutoring Initiative has gained through research?
Reviewing the statistics from past years, the Transformative Tutoring Initiative has concluded that tutoring increases a student's standardized test scores. But more than that, we've also been able to reuse and refine strategies and resources to further develop their overall usefulness.
How has your tutoring and research helped your students grow academically and personally?
The more we continued with varied math processes throughout the semester, the more I saw students grow in reasoning and learning, and also in fully grasping skills they didn't understand completely, like fractions. My students were able to have fun with it and incorporate what they learned into other areas of math.
What advice would you give to future OU students who want to conduct undergraduate research?
Pick research you are passionate about! I say this because the Transformative Tutoring Initiative worked great for me as a math major, and it also helped me pick up skills for potential careers in education! It helped me grow personally, and I love seeing the fruits of my labor through my students! I never thought I would do research at OU, especially when thinking about what research typically looks like. However, through this opportunity, I've been able to experience a more practical side of research and how I can participate as a researcher.
