From Problem-Solving to Teaching Problem-Solving: Aligning LLMs with Pedagogy using Reinforcement Learning

Abstract

Large language models (LLMs) can transform education, but their optimization for direct question-answering often undermines effective pedagogy which requires strategically withholding answers. To mitigate this, we propose an online reinforcement learning (RL)-based alignment framework that can quickly adapt LLMs into effective tutors using simulated student-tutor interactions by emphasizing pedagogical quality and guided problem-solving over simply giving away answers. We use our method to train a 7B parameter tutor model without human annotations which reaches similar performance to larger proprietary models like LearnLM. We introduce a controllable reward weighting to balance pedagogical support and student solving accuracy, allowing us to trace the Pareto frontier between these two objectives. Our models better preserve reasoning capabilities than single-turn SFT baselines and can optionally enhance interpretability through thinking tags that expose the model's instructional planning.

Accepted to EMNLP 2025 Main as an oral presentation. David Dinucu-Jianu and Jakub Macina contributed equally. Code available: https://github.com/eth-lre/PedagogicalRL