The Incredible Power of Tutoring in Education

Most people agree that educating our youth is one of the most noble and important tasks for securing our future. For years, it has been known that individual tutoring can dramatically improve students’ academic performance. However, the challenge lies in replicating this success on a large scale, a dilemma known as Bloom’s 2 Sigma Problem.

The “2 Sigma Problem” originates from a study conducted by educational psychologist Benjamin Bloom in 1984. Bloom’s study involved three groups of students: one group received traditional classroom instruction, the second group was taught using mastery learning (where students receive corrective feedback after an exam and have the opportunity to retake it), and the third group received one-on-one tutoring. While the mastery learning students performed one standard deviation better than those taught in a traditional classroom, the tutored students showed an extraordinary improvement of 2 standard deviations. The implications are profound, suggesting that if the effects of one-on-one tutoring could be effectively replicated in a typical classroom setting, the average student’s performance could match the level of the top 2% of students in the conventional system. The challenge, which Bloom termed the “2 Sigma Problem,” is to find a way to do it.

Since Bloom’s research was published, educators and technologists have explored various strategies to address the 2 Sigma Problem. These include the development of adaptive learning technologies, which use algorithms to tailor educational content to the individual needs of each student, much like a human tutor would. This represents one of the major potential promises of AI: a future where every child can access top-tier education.

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