Describing a learners’ view and A Learners’ Guide for Teachers in Classic Education on educlassics.com have clarified a point that has bothered me for decades: What essential (generic) relationship exists between teachers and learners that results in the most learning by learners?
Educators’ Views of the Relationship
Educators, politicians, and others have defined such relationships from teachers’ views. These are generally accepted as variations of common sense with roots back eons: teachers instruct learners, so learners may increase learning. Developers of Direct Instruction (DI) have formalized this view into the most efficient pedagogy for teachers to use in order to increase learning. DI has been examined in the largest experimental empirical classroom study in education history. It involved hundreds of teachers and over one million learners. It appears consistent, for the most part, with experimental empirical behavioral science descriptions of what people do to learn. The influence of this pedagogy extends worldwide through a legacy in and out of schools.
For whatever reasons, most educators, at least in the United States and likely also in its sphere of influence, choose not to use or support the use of DI in schools. I’ve argued that this majority uses a different ideology for choosing their pedagogies. Their explanations rest on assumptions inconsistent with behavioral science descriptions of what people do and how much they likely can learn. At the same time, the statement of ideological differences seems an inadequate distinction. The word ideology carries too much baggage irrelevant to increasing learning, since most learning outside of schools occurs through guidance consistent with direct instruction.
A Learners’ View (ALV) of the Relationship
From a learners’ view (ALV) the relationship between teacher and learner is reversed. Conventional words make the difference seem subtle: Teachers are tools or instruments, if you prefer, of learners. Learners let teachers do things to effect changes in behavior patterns learners use at least during lessons teachers offer. The technical difference seems less subtle.
ALV rests on the assumption that learning from relationships between learners and teachers is voluntary. That’s a fundamental assumption for analyzing social action in a social system.
Regardless of why teachers and learners have a relationship, learners do not have to learn. They do not have to do what any teacher says or shows, irrespective of any consequences. The cartoonist Charles Shultz demonstrated this voluntary point repeatedly over decades with Charlie at his desk talking, passing notes, etc. and listening only to some parts of what the teacher says: “Blah blah blah blah Charlie blah blah blah…” He chose (volunteered) not to pay attention except to select words.
From ALV, the teacher was Charlie’s instrument. He selected to what, when, and how he would attend to the teacher as does a carpenter choose which saw to use to accomplish something.
Implications
This summary of teacher and learner relationships has implications for practice that go beyond behavioral science descriptions used to draft A Learners’ Guide for Teachers. These relationships reach to the core of why public schools exist, what should result from them, who will generate these results, and what resources as well as practices educators most likely use to accomplish this goal. It speaks to the structure and use of pedagogy beyond ideologies educators hold as favorites.
It also speaks to the use of how electronic devices deliver with plans, instruction and assessment tools that begin and end with what learners do to learn. These devices permit more accurate assessment of teaching practices and forecasting of learning. These just require more straight line planning, not complex rocket science.
For sociology, relationships from ALV get to the core of how variations in views influence social structures and dynamics that distribute access to and exercise of power and wealth over personal and social survival and change. ALV indicates technical ways to examine empirical effects of various views on rates of learning and how these rates influence the accumulation of power, wealth, and survival of learners and of social systems. Now, here’s a germ of an empirical study. I’m guessing it would require foundation vs. government support to a university open to challenging the way public school educators practice today.
To Do
I want to describe these implications more fully, especially for sociology and at least sociology of education, but after finishing the guide for teachers. So, I’ve added these projects to my list of topics to explore further.
I wonder if anyone else finds any of these implications interesting enough to join me in developing them or as critics of them? Sure glad I’m 29 again!