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

A Learners’ View (ALV) is to Learning as Do-Re-Mi is to Music.

Main Article: Classic Education: A Learners’ View (ALV) of Choices during Teaching and Learning Website

Introductory Article: A Learners’ View (ALV) of Teaching and Learning in One Lesson

Summary: A learners’ view (ALV) refers to what people do (operations) to learn, including from teaching. It represents the minimum common observable patterns of behavior during social interaction that people use while learning. These patterns describe a language of learning (LANOL) that organizes the physical sensations learners use while learning lessons. By using this language during instruction of lessons, teachers accelerate, increase, and deepen learning (AID) promptly. Scientists have reported these patterns without those names in publications of experimental behavioral and social science research studies of learning during more than a century.

IN THE 1964-5 ACADEMIC YEAR, Samuel A. Kirk entered the classroom, looked over the assembled 20 or so graduate students and auditing faculty members, set his papers onto the table, looked up, pointed at me and said commandingly (at least that’s what I remember thinking at the time), “Heiny! Tell me how you teach a lesson, so that students learn it.” I believed then that learning just happens. It’s a mysterious non-reducible part of life. His questions probed for a generalization of how teaching results in learning that he could test empirically. Kirk was probing what I now understand may be called the hocus pocus in my responses. He was asking me to describe how teaching and learning work together, not as I believed them to work. I quickly realized that my years of schooling and teaching had not left me with the background to answer that question. For the next two and one-half hours, he did not ask anyone else a question, nor did he lecture or did anyone else say anything. Instead, he probed for more details to every response I gave. At the end of the class, I overheard two students saying to each other, “I’m glad he didn’t call on me!” Before sitting down later at my study desk, I knocked on Dr. Kirk’s office door and asked him, “Did I do or say something wrong?” “No,” he responded politely. “Keep doing what you’re doing,” as he turned back to his writing desk. I have. It took another four decades for someone to ask me that question again. Descriptions of stimulus-response theory, two-choice discrimination analysis, etc. did not satisfy. That dissatisfaction gave a focus to efforts to address Kirk’s question again, refined now to describing core necessary elements that people use to learn during teaching in and out of schools as well as affect their life chances in society. A learners’ view (ALV) represents a step toward answering that question for educators, scientists, and electronic engineers interested in accounting for why some people learn and others do not learn from lessons teachers instruct.

From a learners’ view (ALV) of learning, two types of lessons exist: (1) ALV Lessons that occur in 20 to 30 seconds, and (2) Other Lessons that consume more time and less learning.

ALV (a Learners’ View) in One ALV Lesson

The term a learners’ view and its acronym ALV appears as a proof-of-concept prototype of choices of social actions learners will probably (statistically likely) make while learning from teaching. From this view, learning occurs (1) in one-step (2) through two options (trial-and-errors; correct or not-correct choices) (3) in three parts (before, during and after a social action) (4) at four levels or orders (Physical Sensations, Problem Solving, Social Integration, Meeting Common Priorities/Values) that answers one or more (5) of five generic questions (What is this? What is like this? What is not like this? What comes next? and What is missing?) in ways that benefit learners. The elements in this sequence represent the fewest common choices (social actions reported by experimental behavioral and social scientists) likely to occur during instruction that results in learners learning lessons that the most accomplished people in society learned. These choices form an infrastructure of learning (the social patterns that occur during learning lessons during teaching) which in turn affects the infrastructure of life chances in society.

ALV (a Learners’ View) in One Regular Lesson

We share in this family, Grandpa. It’s my turn to use the hammer, Loren instructed Grandpa.

Loren C. Heiny (age 3), 1964, Urbana, IL

The ALV Map of choices by learners is to learning from teaching as is a street map that shows relationships among parts of a city.

Classic Education: A Learners’ View (ALV) of Choices during Teaching and Learning, this website, describes operations teachers use to share with learners how (operations) to solve problems. These operations rely on a map of choices learners use implicitly while learning. This map refers to the fewest choices common across reports by experimental behavioral and social scientists of teaching that result in prompt learning. These reports describe that learners will likely make 15 choices at five choice points while learning a lesson teachers instruct. Lessons clarify choices of vocabulary and relationships among this vocabulary, as do street names on a city map show such relationships in a city. While teachers don’t use hammers during lessons, except in shop classes, they do either intentionally or unknowingly and randomly use this map (a collection of likely choices by learners) as a tool to shape styles of instruction of lessons that learners learn.

From a learners view, to the extent that this map results in learners learning lessons, styles of teaching are expressions of the parts that form a structure (like a bridge) between teaching and learning. Vocabulary and their relationships (the content of lessons) cross that bridge. Dr. Kirk’s lesson was Socratic style, similar in spirit to lessons that use the Harkness Table approach. This structure and relationships among its parts may be called the anatomy of teaching-learning. The interactions among these parts that result in learning may be compared with the physiology of humans. A learners’ view represents the parts and processes that experimental behavioral and social scientists have reported occurring during those moments of learning from teaching.

WHEN YOU LEARN something, you use a learners’ view (ALV). Technically, your learning occurs when someone else notices or in another way acknowledges that you solved a problem new to you. While learning, you make choices through social processes along the ALV Path of learning. The ALV Map features this path. As a learner, you add potential to society. You participate in society the way plants add oxygen to the atmosphere.

When you learn, you follow the ALV Path, whether or not you acknowledge it. On this path, you choose to what to pay attention among all the things you see, hear, touch, feel, etc. around you. You also choose how to use your physical senses to learn something, that is to solve a problem.

A learners’ view gives priority to common active ingredients of learning (AILs). You and others can observe and measure them. Learners likely (probably) choose one or more AILs while learning lessons. ALV also describes choices teachers make during instruction of a lesson that match choices learners make while learning those lessons. By matching, teachers accelerate, increase, and deepen (AID) learning, sometimes dramatically.

TEACHING STYLES, from a learners’ view (ALV), are rooted in physical senses, such as seeing, hearing, etc. These styles in various ways show and tell learners how to solve problems in ways society accepts and values. Currently these styles typically feature names such as character development, creativity, critical thinking, collaboration, cooperation, mentoring, and values based. Educators use such words to classify their general intent for instructing lessons in classrooms, tutoring sessions, and online.

None of these styles or their tools give priority to AILs, that is, to those aspects of a lesson that learners use while learning that lesson. When learning occurs from those lessons, it occurs by chance. However, use of a teaching style that leads to learners learning lessons probably includes one or more AIL(s).

The more educators match your choices while you learn, the more likely it is that you learn more, whether or not you or your educator acknowledge ALV, the ALV Map, or the ALV Path.

The tragedy is that more educators do not use ALV and the ALV Path intentionally and consistently, so you and all other learners may accelerate, increase, and deepen (AID) more learning promptly. In these ways, your choices make a place for you in society. You can choose to keep that place or change it with more choices. This site aims to reduce one lesson at a time the likelihood of learners failing-to-learn. Read More

Learning as Solving Five Generic Problems

People learn by solving problems, that is people choose from among many options the one that leads to adopting, adapting, and perhaps adjusting it to avoid a problem the next time they encounter a similar situation. Read More

ALV as Social Processes

ALV is a property of the social institution education and of its organizations and their processes, such as schooling and instruction. ALV appears as an integral part of teaching and learning during schooling, regardless of its name, such as classical, practical, 21st century, or another type of education. Read More

Choices of Learners

See me as a learner, making choices just like you make them while you learn. Read More

Choices of Teachers

A learners’ view shows you ways for learners to learn more, that is to accelerate, increase, and deepen (AID) learning. ALV is to learning as Do-Re-Mi (pronounced doe-ray-me) is to music; both refer to the infrastructure of their social activities. … This view of teaching and learning represents a change for most educators. Read More

Choices of 1.0 Ancillary School Personnel

Ancillary school personnel choose the level of specialized technical support they provide, so that all students will likely learn all lessons. These services feature specialties upon which teachers rely in order to provide accurate and precise instruction that AIDs learning. For example, based on … Read More

Choices of School Administrators

School administrators, from a learners’ view, choose the level of learning likely to occur in their schools. They do so by the extent to which they adopt and adapt ALV to guide operation of schooling. That choice influences their selection, support, and retention of personnel who apply and are open to applying technical-scientific literacy of learning. Read More

Choices of School Board Members

The New Era School Initiative (NESI) describes academic performance levels possible for learners to earn today when educators give priority to a learners’ view in a school. NESI features uses of the state-of-the-art in teaching-learning. Boards of education can authorize use of this view and these likely results today. Read More

What is Possible Today

It’s possible for you to choose to AID learning promptly starting with one or more lessons today. Other teachers have done so as depicted in the New Era School Initiative (NESI) press release. Read More

Why AIDing Learning Is Possible Today

Application of ALV, also called the Law of Teaching-Learning (LOTL), makes it possible. You already use LOTL without its name when someone learns from your lessons. Read More

It’s Your Choice, Teacher, Always

It’s your choice, Teacher. / You’re in service to Learning, / The oxygen of social life. Read More

You’re a teacher, if … Read More

They Ask Me Why I Teach Read More

How to AID Learning Today

Here are ways you can apply ALV. Quick Look

References

Related Resources

A Note To Readers

NO ONE KNOWS WHEN, BY WHOM, HOW, OR WHY teaching and learning began. At the same time, almost everyone has encountered someone teaching and someone learning something. Read More

Last Edited: June 20, 2016

ALV (A Learners’ View) of Learning in One Lesson