Session Outline

Advising in a Time of Change

Gary Jones (Scholars School); Dionne Barton (De Montfort)

Personal tutoring and academic advising are recognised as key elements in supporting students to succeed throughout their educational journey. They not only support students academically but can also provide pastoral and professional support. In the current HE climate, where there is increased pressure on academic and support staff, personal tutoring can be overlooked. However, as noted in Advanced HE’s (2021) Framework for Student Access, Retention, Attainment and Progression (Essential Framework for Enhancing Student Success), academic and pastoral support are crucial drivers for securing retention and attainment.

Leaders involved in personal tutoring across the UK have collaboratively worked to understand the current state of personal tutoring and its leadership within the sector. A personal tutoring survey was distributed throughout the sector to understand the diverse models of personal tutoring and academic advising currently in place. Additionally, it allowed researchers to assess the reach, value, and impact of personal tutoring and academic advising, and how this can be leveraged to ensure the quality, depth, and rigour of provision. This is especially important in a climate where higher education faces significant resource challenges.

This presentation will share the survey’s findings, offering insights into the current state of personal tutoring in the UK and the challenges it faces. Recommendations will be made on how to advance personal tutoring practices to adapt to the evolving landscape of higher education.

You are not alone as a tutor: Providing Academic and Pastoral Support to Students within a Changing Institutional Approach to Tutoring

Genevieve Breau (University of Greenwich); Nevin Mehmet (University of Greenwich)

Introduction: At a post-1992, teaching-focused university, in the 2024-2025 academic year a new academic tutoring framework was introduced across the institution: while previously personal tutors provided both academic and pastoral support, under the new framework academic staff provide only academic support, with pastoral support provided by Faculty Student Advisors.

Methods: In this shifting environment, in 2023-2024 and 2024-2025, we interviewed 24 undergraduate students within an academic School regarding their experiences with tutoring both before and after the implementation of the new tutor framework, to gain student perspectives on this change.

Findings: A key finding was that under both the old and new frameworks, while students would seek both academic and pastoral support from tutors, there were also many other academic and professional services staff that students would seek support from, including module leaders, programme leaders, placement tutors, academic skills tutors (at the library), employability skills advisors, and administrative staff concerned with administrative, financial, and accommodation matters.

Conclusions: Students were generally satisfied with their tutor signposting them to further university supports, and did not expect tutors to provide all of the support needed. Students also felt more confident in Years 2 and 3 in being able to access necessary supports without signposting from the tutor. However, although under the new framework pastoral support was not provided by academic tutors, students indicated that in Year 1 they would prefer to seek support from a member of academic staff known to them, such as their tutor. We will also discuss tutors' perspectives of tutoring under the new framework, and how the change in tutoring framework has impacted their tutoring practice.

Advising the Advisers: Rethinking Burnout and Sustainability in Academic Tutoring Roles

Aleksey Kozikov (Newcastle University); Anna Tiuniakova (AT Training Class)

Personal tutoring and academic advising have become increasingly central to institutional responses to student engagement, wellbeing and transition in an era characterised by rapid change, institutional complexity, resource constraints and rising uncertainty. As expectations placed upon advising roles continue to expand in response to these pressures, the sustainability of those who hold these roles remains markedly underexamined. Emerging evidence across UK higher education suggests the presence of a distinct form of burnout specific to academic advising and tutoring: a phenomenon shaped not by generic workload pressures, but by a constellation of role-specific conditions, including role ambiguity and boundary uncertainty, intensive emotional labour without formal recognition in the workload, structurally isolated decision-making, uneven preparedness and training provision, limited access to supervision and fragmented peer-support infrastructures. Despite its systemic relevance, this category of burnout has not yet been coherently described in the research literature, leaving institutions without adequate conceptual or practical tools for recognising risk, intervening early or designing sustainable advising environments.

This talk introduces a research-informed framework that delineates the mechanisms through which advising-related burnout arises and explains why existing staff-wellbeing models frequently fail to capture it within increasingly complex institutional systems. Drawing on insights from a practitioner-led exploratory enquiry comprising twenty cross-institutional conversations with personal tutors, tutoring leaders and staff-wellbeing professionals, the framework reflects recurrent patterns observed across these interconnected roles. Through conceptual synthesis of these insights and existing scholarship, the model clarifies how the specific features of academic advising work accumulate into a distinctive and under-recognised form of burnout. The analysis further demonstrates how these pressures can undermine tutors’ professional confidence, reduce the consistency and quality of student support, and heighten institutional vulnerability during periods of sector-wide change.

The session offers three key outcomes for participants: a clear conceptual model for recognising tutoring-specific burnout as distinct from general staff wellbeing concerns; the ability to identify organisational practices and institutional conditions that may inadvertently intensify risk within advising systems; a set of emergent principles for designing sustainable training, supervision and peer-support structures grounded in emotionally informed advising practice. Collectively, these outcomes are intended to support practitioners, leaders and policymakers in strengthening advising capacity during times of change, while aligning staff and student sustainability and wellbeing.

Learning Outcomes

Bibliography