Just the Facts Tip of ALV

Tip

Pick up a piece of paper. Punch a hole in it with a pin. Place that hole over one of your eyes. Close the other eye. Look through the hole. Now, delete everything you see except for what must occur for you to solve a problem.

You have just used a learners’ view (ALV) to answer a question, that is, to solve a problem.

Here’s a simple problem: How many feet in this room move in five seconds?

To answer that question, look through the pin hole, then count and write down the number of feet you see move in five seconds. Repeat that exercise five times looking at feet in another area of the room each time.

Now, ask someone else to do the same thing to solve the same problem in the same room at the same time counting and recording the number of feet he or she sees moving in five seconds. Repeat this task until you see a pattern in the record of the number of feet moving each of you see. Patterns may at least include the range, median, and mode of moving feet. Systematically test this pattern in other rooms of other people until you and other observers agree that the pattern occurs reliably under specific conditions you state.

You have just created a social fact from a learners’ view. Behavioral scientists have reported uncounted thousands of such detailed descriptions of learning during more than a century.

The term a learners’ view (ALV) represents a collection and winnowing of these details into one category and assembles them into the order learners show observers that they use to learn something.

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