ABSTRACT
We have already discussed the tutors’ determination thatthe student be kept as active a participant in the prob-lem-solving process as possible. The primary means by which the tutors attempt to accomplish this is the use of hinting. It is not clear whether hinting should be classified as a tactic or a delivery mode-a way of carrying on a dialogue that pushes the student into greater activity-that can be combined with almost any other teaching tactic. In this chapter we define hints, tell how we identified them in the tutoring sessions, describe the different kinds of hints that we found, look at the rules governing when tutors give hints and when they stop hinting, and give some information about numbers of hints.
