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

Main Article: NARRATIVES

Theme of Site: The science of teaching-learning as social processes and its uses to accelerate, increase, and deepen (AID) learning.

FROM A LEARNERS’ VIEW (ALV), learning is connecting two dots. Learners choose the dots, their contents, and ways they connect them. Their choices range from physical sensations that attract their attention to social values from which they benefit. Teachers simplify the complex into lessons. They teach those lessons simply. Thus, to the extent that observers can see, hear, and in other ways sense and describe learning and teaching, learning from teaching exists as social processes.

When we want someone to learn a lesson, we teach like learners learn. We teach that lesson in ways that match the choices learners more likely make while learning. In doing so, we show and tell learners which simple choices the most accomplished people use to solve complex problems efficiently, so learners may do so also.

Said another way, teachers show learners ways the most accomplished people simplify the complex, that is solve problems. This seems obvious. Yet an unanswered question remains: What joins learning with teaching? How precise and accurate must teaching be for learners to learn lessons?

The answer, from a learners’ view, is that choices by learners and by teachers join learning with teaching. Teaching must be as accurate and precise as it takes to match choices learners will most likely make while learning each lesson.

Is ALV a Description, Model, or Theory?

ALV is an acronym for a learners’ view. (Note that this is a plural possessive part of speech.) It is a name of something that you can see, hear, and use while teaching, a technical-scientific descriptor. A learners’ view represents technical descriptions that experimental behavioral and social scientists report of people doing while learning.

This descriptions includes a sequence of activities that serves as a model for organizing lessons that teachers instruct. To the extent that someone generalizes from these descriptions and still calls it ALV, they use this name as a theory. People who apply the technical-scientific descriptions ALV represents while teaching will likely accelerate, increase, a deepen (AID) the amount and rate of learning promptly and sometimes dramatically. Read More

It Is What It Is: A Learners’ View (ALV) Of Learning

The job of scientists is to describe and report what they can see, hear and in other ways sense as existing. For over a century, experimental behavioral and social scientists have described and started arranging into categories and hierarchies sensations and other choices learners will likely use while learning. These arrangements yield principles of learning that represent choices learners make while learning. Scientists marvel, from this view, at the simplicity, symmetry, and beauty of learning, including from teaching.

It follows that whenever someone learns something from a lesson, that lesson matches sensations learners choose while learning that lesson. From this view, a learners’ view, learners pick and choose parts of lessons as they try to solve problems teachers present. The more learners learn, the more those lessons match choices learners will likely make.

Teachers and scientists have used these principles in experimental studies that accelerate, increase, and deepen (AID) the academic performance of students in and out of schools.

There is no magic or hocus pocus about these procedures. Quite the opposite. These scientists described for educators the parts of learning to use in lessons in order to AID learning. These parts give teachers an advantage over theorizing an other forms of guessing of with ways to manage learning more precisely, so learners will more likely learn those lessons.

This view also follows common sense: You teach, so someone will learn. At the same time, none of a learners’ view is new to learners who are also teachers. That is the good news.

Here is the bad news in a nutshell: No magic pill exists for everyone to learn without lessons that match the parts of life learners choose while learning.

It takes only minutes for teachers to learn and use the ALV principles of learning. It takes more minutes of practice for teachers to learn to compose lessons from this view that students will likely learn promptly. If you are the Mozart of teaching, you may take less time, but even he took time to write his compositions, so others may play and listen to them.

The puzzle is, why do some teachers make choices that result in fewer people learning their lessons than is technically possible to accomplish in the same amount of classroom time? Do they not want everyone to learn their lessons?

The Stimulating Classroom Fallacy of Teaching

One of the most common arguments about education and learning might be called, from a learners’ view, the stimulating (or rich) environment classroom fallacy of teaching. This fallacy is commonly applied by teachers who hang posters, animal cages, and other items to dress their classrooms as stages for learning. For almost a century, some teachers have added various kinds of “projects” as lessons in order to foster student efforts to blend these props with learning subject matter content and skills. The argument goes like this: Read More

Rationed Learning

Arguably some teachers ration learning of students in their classes. That sounds harsh, even when accurate.

From ALV, we can calculate how much a teacher rations learning. It is the difference between what learners learn from lessons taught, and what is technically possible for learners to learn from more refined lessons in that same class and same amount of time.

Because there can be so much emotion attached to terms like teaching and rationed learning, it is hard to see that learning is like any other part of daily life. Learning is what people do to have a daily life, that is to solve ever present problems in order to survive each moment as best as possible. Read More

Related Resources

Gold, M. (1980). Did I Say That? Articles and Commentary on the Try Another Way System. Champaign, IL: Research Press.
Teachers Do the Hokey Pokey
Zeaman, D. & House, B. (1963). Two Choice Visual Discrimination Analysis. In Ellis, N. (Ed.). Handbook of Mental Deficiency: Psychological Theory and Research.

Afterwords

To clarify, science consists of procedures. Use of these procedures yields data that describe in technical ways what exists.

Practices of scientists give priority to generating data that they describe based on their research designs. They ground their observations and applications in experimental research. Grounding refers the metaphors of a plant emerging from soil.

They report their data in ways that others may replicate it. They suspend personal beliefs, biases, and other self interests that might influence each study. They use research designs to suspend as much as possible their personal interests.

In this way, other scientists may follow the same procedures to test how much confidence to have in data from these studies.. In these ways, they try systematically to discover and report parts of what exists, so others may use these parts to imagine lessons that their students learn.

Scientists use vocabulary to discuss their studies and data more precisely and accurately than with nonscientific vocabulary.

Some scientists apply their discoveries to teaching and learning. Their results cast no judgment on choices Ms. Brookes or you make to handle what you believe are your teaching responsibilities.

However, results from choices made by both you and Ms. Brookes are open to observation, measurement, and comparison with academic performance levels obtained from application of techniques and data from experimental behavioral and social science research to compose lessons that AID learning promptly and sometimes dramatically.

Last Edited: October 2, 2015

Teach Like Learners Learn