A Learners’ View (ALV) Is Of Choices On The Straightest and Shortest Path to Learning, the Oxygen Of Social Life.
Last Edited: January 20, 2019
Main Page: Teach Like Learners Learn
ALV is an acronym for the name A Learners’ View of learning. This name refers to the social apparatus of how, according to learners, people learn. It describes the parts and processes of the perspective people use to learn something without referring to cognition, brain functions, emotions, motivation, and other factors attributed to the personal life of people. A learners’ view considers learning to be a social instead of a personal activity, that is a we instead of a me or thee performance.
ALV as a Description
More precisely, ALV and a learners’ view represent the technical-scientific descriptions of the least number and kinds of what experimental behavioral and social scientists report in common that people do while learning.
These common descriptions consist of patterns of social elements (parts) and interactions; (processes). Teachers and other observers use these parts and processes to see, hear, and in other ways physically sense someone learning. In this way, people identify, observe, intervene, measure, report, discuss, etc. that learning is or is not occurring as well as has or has not occurred.
As commonalities, this view serves as an infrastructure or a social apparatus for learning the subject matter being instructed in teachers’ lessons. According to the body of experimental behavioral and social science research reports on teaching-learning, learning with instruction does not occur without this infrastructure.
ALV as a Model and Theory
ALV may be used as the name of a model (a framework) for teachers to reference while instructing lessons. It may also be used as a theory (a set of principles, laws) to account in general ways for how learning occurs during instruction of lessons.
Scientists, scholars, teachers and others use these technical elements to conduct their daily professional responsibilities. Scientists use them to operationalize their experiments and to build their theories. Scholars use them to analyze and assess learning and its social consequences. Teachers use them when their lessons accelerate, increase, and deepen learning.
For more than a century, experimental scientists have refined descriptions of learning. These refinements form a common sequence of human social interaction patterns. These patterns identify 15 choice-points that learners use while learning even the simplest task, such as connecting two dots with a line, that is, learning to solve a problem. Each choice point consists of selecting an optional social action.
The sequence learners use while learning reads, Learning occurs in one step (all else is trial-and-errors) with two options (succeed or fail to succeed) in three stages (before, during, and after learning something) at four levels (First, Second, Third, and Fourth Level learning) demonstrated in one or more of five generic results/answers to problems/questions (What is it? What is like it? What is not like it? What comes next? What is missing?).
Implications
A learners’ view of learning replaces the mystery of how people learn and the magic of teaching with description of a craft that links the two with the distribution of social benefits, rights, and obligations. This craft is embedded in the body of experimental behavioral and social science empirical research reports of teaching and learning.
This view gives priority to a colloquial We over I or Me. Priority goes to the social elements and social processes teachers and learners use to converse while learners learn to solve problems as instructed through lessons.
Teachers and other human service workers apply these descriptions by chance or by plan when learning occurs. They accelerate the amount, increase the rate, and deepen the learning (AID) promptly and sometimes dramatically when they use a learners’ view intentionally.
Applying ALV does not require a model or a theory to anticipate more than eight out of ten times whether a learner will learn a teacher’s lesson.
Discussion
The internal arrangement of a learners’ view is independent from, but appears consistent with the general theory of social action by Parsons (1939?). Consistency occurs after reviewing this body of experimental research studies by “taking the role (perspective, attitude, anticipate the action/response) of the other” (Mead, 1957?), that is, of reading experimental research reports from the perspective of the subjects (the learners) rather than of the experimenters (the scientists and teachers).
Parsons theorizes that social actions form a hierarchy of influence and control of society and its members. Influence starts with members as actors who exhibit patterns of behavior to reach goals that fit with social norms that support or change social value patterns. At the same time, social value patterns form a “latent” pattern of control over which social norms people most likely try to fit with tasks to meet their goals.
References
- da Silva, F. (20xx). G. H. Mead: A Critical Introduction.
- Mead, G.H. (1957). Mind, Self, and Society.
- Parsons, T. (1939).
Related Reading
- Behind Classic Education: A Learners’ View (ALV) of Choices during Teaching and Learning
- Technical-Scientific Literacy of Educators (TSLE)
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