Risk of Failure to Learn

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

Main Page: Terms that Describe Vocabulary of Learning and its Uses

Theme: Technical definitions from a learners’ view (ALV) of learning.

Definition: 1. a The probability that impediments will block a learner from resolving a problem or in other ways hinder meeting a learning criterion for a lesson. b A lesson with inadequate active ingredients of learning. c Instruction that does not complete the lesson.

2. The likelihood that a lesson does not address the two primary questions a learner tries to answer when facing a problem: What do I have to do? and What will it cost me? b. The likelihood that a learner will resolve a problem with the least personal cost and the greatest personal gain.

3. The odds against a learner adapting, adopting, and managing social patterns that survive the moment.

4.  Graphics and narratives that describe probabilities of a learner failing to reach criterion for a lesson.

Comment: The risk of failure to learn increases in three ways during a lesson.

1. Instruction does not tell the learner what to do, how to navigate through the lesson or provide other mitigation against failure.
2. Instruction does not tell a learner what to pay (in time, effort, etc.) or what personal benefit will be received for learning the lesson.
3. The longer the lesson, the more words spoken, etc., and the more steps a learner must make to meet learning criterion for a lesson the less likely a learner will meet that criterion. In its simplist formulation, the probability of resolving the problem is the product of the separate probabilities of completing each step in that resolution. Accordingly, direct instruction with a one step response to criterion can have the highest likelihood of the fewest trials-and-errors (least failures) and the highest likelihood of a learner meeting learning criterion.

Related Reading

1. Analysis of Risk of Failure to Learn
2. Risk
3. Risk Oversight and Management
4. Teacher as Risk Manager

Related Resources

1. NESI (New Era School Initiative) Conversation 10: Rationed Learning: “Yes, but … Report” Revisited
2. Rationed Learning
3. Rationed Learning Press Release
4. STOP Risks of Failure to Learn

Last Edited: March 1, 2015