Multiple contributions

It’s a contribution in different areas. It’s a contribution that sometimes resembles teaching because it provides information. There are other contributions that are methodological, i.e. how to do things, with what, when to do things, where to do things, what to do with what, so things that are more in the area of providing a form of expertise, but in the popularised sense of the term, technical expertise. Depending on the objectives we’ve established with the learner, we’ll start to give them suggestions. The word suggestion is important because in the advisor’s vocabulary there’s a word, a phrase that’s been banned: you have to. You never have to, you can, it’s more justified. So we try to provide them with a range, a choice of activities and working documents so that they can start learning.

Does the advisor make a diagnosis?

It’s not the advisor’s responsibility to diagnose, it’s the advisor’s responsibility to provide the learner with the tools that will enable him to make a diagnosis based on his own criteria, which he often doesn’t have in mind explicitly. The role of the advisor isn’t to tell the learner that you don’t know, it’s to tell the learner to see if you’re capable of seeing what you know and what you don’t know, to see if you think you’re missing something to be able to do what you want to do.