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

Main Article: SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY (Sci-Tech)

Theme: Using a learners’ view to accelerate, increase, and deepen learning promptly and sometimes dramatically.

DR. T. EARNEST NEWLAND handed back to his tests and measurement class the evaluation reports they had written of children they tested with the Stanford-Binet Intelligence Scale (1960). Newland was the former student of Maude Merrill, coauthor with Lewis Terman of the 1937 revision of the scale.

As he distributed the two page papers he admonished students to write to teachers, so they will learn what to do in order for these children to learn more in schools. He added, “What matters is that you help teachers to see what they can do differently. It took only moments for students to glance at their reports to realize that Newland was serious about testing adding value for children from lessons.

Newland used a red pencil to correct format, typos, grammar and other mechanics of standardized psychometric reports. He and his teaching assistant, who used a green pencil,  challenged the content of each report, especially asking for technical accuracy and precision. More red and green pencil notes existed than original text. He based these critiques on the hundreds of experimental research and statistical analysis report articles in the assigned reading list. He required the same preparation and performance on the Wechsler and  other tests of individual performance.

Decades later, former Newland students could identify each other by their critiques of research and program proposals submitted to the federal government for funding.

TO TEACH FROM A LEARNERS’ VIEW, follow the ALV Path in your lesson. Use active ingredients of learning (AILs) as needed at each choice point to increase chances of learners choosing options that lead to learning that lesson. Whenever learning occurs from lessons, teachers follow the ALV Path, either deliberately or by chance. The closer you follow it, the more likely learners will learn. By following this path by plan, you will more likely accelerate, increase, and deepen (AID) learning promptly and sometimes dramatically. The ALV Path of five choice-points where teachers select how to match parts of the lesson with probabilities of choices learners will likely make while learning that lesson. For purposes of using ALV, probabilities consist of more facts described by experimental researchers than of speculation of effects of those selections. These matches guide expression of heartfelt empathy and purpose through the art of teaching. Matches are part of the craft of teaching as are mixing colors and stroking brushes part of the craft of being a portrait artist or of a surgeon guiding the stroke of her scalpel, removing the object of the surgery as well as sponges, etc., and then stitching together that incision.

Fundamentals for Using ALV

FROM A LEARNERS’ VIEW (ALV) OF TEACHING, a lesson is a gamble, a bet by teachers that learners will gain more than they loose by learning the instructed lesson, especially that teachers’ efforts are worthy of learners’ time which they cannot recover, as well as of attention, effort, and their other personal resources, including loss of learning to do something else during that time in or out of school. Read More

Prepare to Design a 1.0 Lesson

THIS LIST is based on observing and on self-reports of what people have done to prepare and then have offered 1.0 Lessons consistently. Through trial-and-error with one or more colleagues, they refined (edited) lessons as best they could before instructing them. Teachers: Read More

Begin Designing a Lesson at Its End

A SECRET, not a magic bullet, while designing a 1.0 lesson is to begin at the end of the lesson (with your objective, the punch line of the joke, the key in which you plan to sing, the molecular weight you want learners to calculate) and work backwards to the start of the lesson. This way, you can adjust what you say and do to fit the amount of time you plan to allot to the lesson. Read More

Weave Three Threads into a Triple-Helix

EACH LESSON consists of a Triple-Helix of three sets of choices a teacher makes from three sources and then chooses how to match them to form one lesson. Teachers choose: Read More

Related Reading

1. Quick Start
2. 1.0 Instruction
3. 1.0 Lesson
4. 1.0 Lesson Plan
5. 20 Second Lesson
6. Active Ingredients of learning (AIL)
7. A Learners’ View (ALV) of Learning
8. ALV Path
9. ALV Tips for Teaching
10. Memorable Teaching
11. NESI Interviews and Conversations about Applying ALV
12. Triple-Helix of Learning
13. Wish List Lesson (WLL)

 Related Resources

1. Applications of ALV
2. NESI TIPSheets