University tutoring as a teaching practice: basis and methods for the development of tutorial action plans at the university

Abstract Nowadays, tutoring is held in high esteem in the training processes of aspiring teachers. However, its habitual practice promotes a distancing from didactics, which is relegated to a mere service to the students regarding issues that essentially do not affect the scope of the purposes that the university must pursue. The present work aims to propose an adequate meaning of tutoring in higher education, with a unique projection in the initial training of teachers throughout the educational system, promoting actions that place tutoring in its proper position as a teaching practice. A critical review of higher education tutoring’s concepts and practices, and of its effects on, and understandings about, students, makes it possible to establish the needed bases and methods to achieve the demanding task that higher education didactics pursues in the initial training of aspiring teachers.