A Learners’ View (ALV) Is Of Choices On The Shortest And Fastest Path To Learning, The Oxygen Of Social Life.

Last Editor: October 21, 2018

Main Page: ALV (a Learners’ View) of Choices during Teaching and Learning

Theme: Steps learners take while learning and implications of these steps.

CONTENT on this site responds with scientific descriptions to the question, Tell me what steps learners use to learn. What do they do first, second, etc.? The request came from someone representing a group that had spent $1,000,000 the previous year and failed to answer the question. Members of the group had interests that included resolving social welfare issues such as the unequal distribution of learning, failure-to-learn in schools, and their relationships to life chances in society.

I, too, could not answer the question as directly and precisely as the questioner required. Nor had I heard or read of anyone asking for a concise description of the sequence from beginning to end grounded in experimental science. However, I was familiar with research literature that reports bits and pieces of steps. Curiosity more than anything else lead to accepting the question as a personal challenge to answer. If it helps one person to assist someone to learn to do more and learn it quicker, it will have been a worthy effort.

Based on familiarity with the scientific literature and practice of teaching and learning, I assumed that steps exist in over 125 years of experimental behavioral and social science research descriptions of learning. The challenge required a process consistent with experimental science in order to avoid a false-positive answer such as cherry picking words to fit an undisclosed model or theory. Identifying descriptions of existing steps offers a way to see if they are sufficient to offer a preliminary answer.

Steps People Use to Learn

A characteristic task of scientists who study teaching and learning is to describe what people do to learn. Scientists assume that results of their task can guide ways for teachers to instruct more efficiently. Together, they offer learning from teaching as a way to validate an answer to the question.

By 2010, I had identified that people learn by making choices during instruction. Experimental studies of teaching and learning used choices in order study something else, such as stimuli, psycholinguistics, and lesson planning. It also had become apparent that these studies presented problems for subjects (learners) to solve.

Subjects made choices to solve problems, the same process as occurs in classrooms. Educators call their experiments “lessons.” The difference between scientific experiments and classroom lessons rests in their purpose, not their processes. Scientists try to answer a question by identifying which choices subjects will select from a set of options. Educators try to show and tell learners which options to select in order to answer a question, that is to solve a problem learners do not solve as quickly as they do with instruction. Both scientists and educators rely on probabilities that their processes will result in fulfilling their purposes.

Thus, choice became the critical (independent) variable for describing which steps people take while learning. That discovery lead to gleaning descriptions of choices by learners and then compressing them into one sentence. People learn in one step by choosing one of two options in three stages at four levels in order to answer one of five generic questions. The expanded sentence reads, People (probably) learn (solve a problem) (1) in one step (2) by choosing the correct one of two options (correct or incorrect) (3) in three stages (beginning, middle, end of the process) (4) at four levels (senses, required to solve a problem, acceptable to most people, that also fits social values) in order to answer one of five generic questions (What is it? What is like it? What is it not and not like it? What comes next? and What is missing?).

The phrase a learners’ view (ALV) represents this sentence. ALV is to education as a measure is to a musical score. Both mark progress in larger compositions, ALV in a curriculum of study and a musical measure in a performance art.

A learners’ view (ALV) is a prototype for a proof-of-concept that steps of learning exist in experimental research literature. This prototype describes the least number of steps common across those studies. Failure to learn occurs when lessons do not include one or more segments of this process. Teachers can use this prototype during instruction as do those whose students learn all lessons. Observers can use it to analyze lesson plans as well as to monitor the progress of learning while someone instructs a lesson.

Procedure to Describe Steps

The request for a sequence of steps of learning required meeting several guidelines. Describing in one sentence the minimum number of common observable actions of people that behavioral and social scientists report learners taking as they learn lessons of teachers meets these guidelines.

1. Precise vocabulary and logic beyond that used in conventional conversations of professionals in and out of schools, including universities. Experimental behavioral and social science research studies provide the most precise and reliable descriptions and logic available to address steps learners use to learn.

2. The first guideline implies that the steps be manageable in practical settings; and

3. That descriptions of steps can be scaled, that is they can be compressed into a minimum number or expanded into a larger number of steps to learn to do something. Finding the least number of common elements among descriptions fit this requirement.

Qualitative Analysis

I used qualitative processes to identify and then sort experimental studies into two groups, those that meet all project guidelines, and those that do not. This was a convenient way to review studies I had used over the decades as examples in university classes, while consulting, and to conduct various research projects. Scientists refer to such a selection as a convenience sample. It serves as sufficient for first attempts to develop a one sentence description of learning. This approach resulted in identify choices of learners as a constant presence in studies by experimental behavioral and social scientists. By designs of studies, scientists asked subjects (learners) to make choices within controlled conditions.

The next step was to identify where choices occur during learning. This lead to identifying experimental studies that examined parts of learning and relationships among these parts. Then, arrange descriptions of these parts into the part of a sequence of learning that they represent. For example, which choice comes first and which second.

More specifically, I plotted on paper a map of purposes and results for each study. Some, for example by Skinner, gave priority to the beginning and ending of learning. Others, for example by Zeaman and House (1963), gave priority to beginning, and Terman and Merrill (1937/1960) gave priority to endings.

The next step was to identify whether a middle also exists. Farber (1968) provided that with his assessment of influences families have on the likelihood of their children learning from one of five (5) teaching methods. His assessment was of families of children in an experimental study of those five teaching methods. Farber’s analysis linked experimental study data with Parsons (1939) who provided a hierarchy of social factors for the middle of the one sentence description of learning. The middle choices alter the likelihood of learners connecting the beginning with the ending.

This map clarified what may be called a structure of learning with a beginning, middle, and ending.

Use with Teaching Methods

After clarifying which guidelines to use for identifying descriptions of learning, I identified examples of teaching procedures that could be used to test the efficacy of the one sentence description. I refined this search further by identifying teaching procedures that scientists had examined with experimental research designs, reported in scientific publications, and had received use over decades by others.

This condition limited the number of teaching procedures to several, some with political baggage that challenges their appeal for educators. For example, Direct Instruction (DI) has existed as a formal system in schools since 1964. It offers the most concise, precise, and accurate lesson protocol. It was the subject of perhaps the largest experimental study of teaching and learning in the United States. Use of DI served as one of the models for the federal legislation named No Child Left Behind (NCLB). Try Another Way (TAW) and Precision Teaching were also identified as examples of teaching methods with strong empirical data validation and reliability coefficients.

Together, these programs demonstrate that it is possible to instruct lessons that all students learn. Teachers using these programs instructed lessons that better than eight (8) out of every 10 totaling over 1 million learners learned. Few, if any, other teaching methods have resulted in this ratio of learning or undergone such rigorous analysis. They show what is possible to expect from instruction. They set a de facto standard for performance of educators. Less formal, more conventional teaching methods were also used to consider the usefulness of the one sentence description of learning for assessing the efficiency and effectiveness of their instruction.

Vocabulary of Learning

The process for developing the one sentence description changed the point of reference for the process of learning from individuals to social action. The name a learners’ view (plural possessive) indicates that shift from the common reference of a learner’s (singular possessive) view.

Experimental behavioral studies of learning describe parts of choices individuals make while learning. Yet, scientists conduct these experiments as social activities. Homans (1960) provides a bridge between individual and social activities as two views of science and their vocabulary. Each view has its own technology and vocabulary, but they share common commitments to experimental protocols of science. The prototype sentence of learning gives priority to science rather than to the descriptors used to report results of those procedures.

ALV and the sentence it represents follow Homan’s lead to include behavioral science of learning as part of the social institution of education. This shift includes changes in definitions from descriptions of concepts to descriptions of operations which scientists refer to as operational definitions.

Initial Field Testing

After developing the one sentence, I casually asked during friendly conversations probably 100 people whether it made sense. “Does that sentence describe what you do and what you see others do while learning something?” With an uncounted few exceptions, people said “No” in some way. They also did not see any use with the sentence for themselves or for teachers. Follow-up questions revealed that educators, including those with advanced degrees, had opinions about, but could not discuss the research that a learners’ view (the prototype sentence) represents. These responses raise the troubling question of where the line is between professional tutorial discretion, willful ignorance, and malpractice in instructional practices.

These people, all with apparent good intentions, included university professors, business people, teachers, students, parents, and community members in rural and urban domestic and international settings. Their ages ranged from middle teens into the 80s with education backgrounds from high school to advanced degrees from Tier One institutions. Their response patterns were consistent with my experience with most educators in teacher preparation programs and public school offices and classrooms.

In addition, I posted online over several years questions based on the prototype sentence to teachers and professors with articles on websites. These sites featured educators who used platforms for teachers to post opinions and to advocate for master teaching status. They responded to my probes, usually with opinions supporting the free exercise of teacher choices in classrooms. As more than one experienced teacher summarized responses of educators, “Nobody knows my problems unless they are teaching in my classroom today, nor can any outsider offer any help except more money for me to use as I choose.”

The main comment from people in each of these two groups was a version of “Real learning is a mental process that is too complicated to be reduced to one sentence, it’s not behavior.” This is consistent with findings by the group that asked the “Tell me what steps learners take” question to which ALV responds. Many people to whom I ask if ALV made sense looked blank and remained silent, still engaged in conversation, but said nothing about the question. When asked, “Please tell me how you learn,” without exception they told a story of general categories of mental things they chose to do. I didn’t have the heart to ask the crucial follow up question in those social situations, “What can I see you do, so I know you learned?”

Several people followed up later with questions to clarify how the one sentence description related to a practice, program, or theory they recounted. An engineer saw the value in the sentence, and likened it to artificial intelligence. Farmers, trades people, and hunters said something like, “It makes sense.” Business people were most likely to ask questions and then say that they saw use for teachers.

Subsequent analyses of those conversations led to the realization that the one sentence prototype violates the spoken but unwritten rule of textbook publishers that you change no more in new textbooks than 15 percent of the vocabulary and content of previous textbooks. That means,

1. The one sentence changes too much at one time, making it too abstract at first, so I should give it a familiar context such as a demonstration lesson so it has social meaning.

2. Abstraction also means the sentence contains words without scientific or technical meaning to educators.

3. Definitions of the words shifted too much for most people to say how they go together to use it; they do not proceed from what they know to what they’re asked.

4. Results of use of ALV during instruction of lessons appear implausible, so do not arouse interest of educators.

5. Implausibility results in part from ideological priorities other than to applying results of the science of teaching and learning.

Changes in Vocabulary

I assume that these responses occur because of inadequate presentations. I began to edit and in other ways adjust the number and quality of descriptions of ALV after receiving the first set of comments about the earliest drafts of the sentence. These adjustments continue in several ways:

1. Word choices changed to descriptors of operations,

2. Editing existing pages to describe these changes concisely,

3. Adjusting the outline and table of contents for the site, and

4. Adding a glossary of terms.

The complexity of these changes quickly lead to the appearance of an on-site word salad. This has led to more systematic editing and condensing of descriptions followed by field checks to identify further changes. Site and content development of support for the protocol sentence continues.

A Difficult Social Issue Remains

ALV refers to the state-of-the-art (SOTA) of instruction, that is, educators choosing to instruct in ways that make it possible for all learners to learn all lessons. Society values that choice. It does a moral good, and is consistent with the new era school initiative. No excuse or moral/ethical reason for not doing so exists for any professional educator. People enter the profession voluntarily and society relies on professionals doing the best possible always for its people. It is a puzzle why educators do not accept personal responsibility to meet the SOTA de facto performance standard for education.

The State-of-the-Craft of Teaching

The potential to instruct lessons that learners learn describes a new state-of-the-craft (SOTC) of teaching, one grounded in choices learners make while learning. SOTC is different from instruction activities that require more speculation as well as from social welfare issues in schools. This new era gives priority to instruction methods (social processes) that have been possible to use for decades. The new era extends use of these methods to include outcomes of lessons consistent with those the most accomplished people in society learn. Use of ALV reduces nearer to zero the rate of failing-to-learn those lessons in spite of social welfare issues, such as inadequate food, shelter, and safety. They too need attention, sometimes in schools, but by others so as not to take instruction time away from educators.

ALV offers education policy makers two fundamental choices, whether (1) to continue funding existing patterns of instruction that at best yield a normal curve distribution of learning, or (2) to give priority to funding SOTA instruction. A third option has existed, but a relatively few educators have adopted or accepted responsibility for using it on their own.

An unasked social question remains. What cost will society tolerate as social consequences of educators not instructing lessons that all learners learn? Lessons people fail to learn rests with the choice of instruction, not from another necessity, a fault of someone else, or a random result?

A learners’ view offers a way for educators one at a time and in groups to choose to instruct lessons now that all learners learn. No additional resources or authorizations are needed. That choice meets a minimum social expectation for educators. Exercising that choice reduces the personal and social costs of learners failing to learn.

References

A Learners’ View (ALV) of Learning
A Learners’ View (ALV) not a Learner’s View
Bibliographic Essay
Farber, B. (1971). Kinship and Class: A Midwestern Study. NY: Basic Books.
Homans, G. (1969). The sociological relevance of behaviorism. In R. Burgess and D. Bushell, Behavioral Sociology: The Experimental Analysis of Social Process. New York: Columbia University Press, pp. 1-26.
Parsons, T. (1939). Theories of Society.
Performance Standard for Educators
Problem a Leaners’ View (ALV) Addresses
Skinners, B.F. (1938). The Behavior of Organisms: An Experimental Analysis. NY: Appleton-Century-Crofts.
Teacher Says I’m Sick and Tired of Ignorant Outsiders
Terman, L. and Merrill, M. (1960). Stanford Intelligence Scale Form L-M. Cambridge MA: The Riverside Press.
Tutorial Discretion
Zeaman, D. & House, B. (1963). Two-Choice Visual Discrimination Analysis. In N. Ellis (Ed.), Handbook of Mental Deficiency: Psychological Theory and Research. NY: McGraw Hill.

Note

This task has roots deep into history of civilizations and society. The emergence of science has resulted in more confidence in the precision of descriptions of that part of history involving learning. The accumulation of these descriptions laid a foundation for a new era in education that uses that precision to allow more precise teaching, and thus, more efficient use of the time and other nonrenewable resources of learners and society.

Last Edited: June 28, 2016

Task of Scientists Studying Teaching and Learning