TMR Introduction

Teachers’ Mobile Reference: Guides to 1.0 Teaching

 

Introduction

Teaching combines science (the subject of procedures), and technology (the subject of capability) with the content of instructed lessons.

 

TEACHERS’ MOBILE REFERENCE: GUIDES TO 1.0 TEACHING alerts you to the most pertinent answers to the question, How can I instruct lessons that all learners learn promptly. This question may also be phrased as, Tell me steps I can see, hear, and in other ways sense that people use to learn, so I can use them while instructing lessons. To address this How question, text in TMR gives priority to the sciences of teaching and of learning. Answers to the how-to-instruct question mirror first principles (laws) of learning as described by scientists after conducting uncounted thousands of controlled experiments in and out of classrooms. These principles represent parts of the moments when learning occurs just as bones and muscles represent parts of the human anatomy the human anatomy. First principles underwrite learning and structure instruction that all learners learn promptly without regard to the practices, policies, theories, programs, or curricula taught.

TMR describes how and why to use various strategies and practices in order to increase the likelihood that all learners will learn lessons you instruct. It also identifies important facts to remember. In spite of its depth and usefulness, TMR is a supplement to, not a substitute for, formal on-going professional development in the experimental science of teaching and learning. In this way, TMR serves as an aid to your discussions with other professionals interested in meeting the state-of-the-art standard for teaching and learning, that all learners learn all lessons consistently.

The TMR design features a learners’ view (ALV) of choices learners make during instruction. ALV represents capsules of common results across experimental behavioral and social science studies of teaching and learning during more than a century of research. These common results appear as essential ingredients when people learn lessons from teaching. This view offers easier searches for quick reminders of effective answers to questions about instruction.

The TMR guide uses a simple, familiar alphabetical listing format of links to topics for convenience and ease of use. Topics include descriptions of activities likely to result in learning as well as links to cross-listings, references, related readings, and related resources such as videos. These provide for more in-depth reviews. TMR has use on-the-fly during instruction as well as during more reflective times, such as while planning lessons and discussing performance evaluations and curricula.
Formal education as practiced in schools is a vast and complicated arena of competing ideas, values, vocabulary, policies, practices, and impacts on individuals and society. At the same time, a common core social purpose exists for schools: to provide teachers to instruct lessons that learners learn more efficiently than without instruction. TMR gives priority to commonalities described by scientists that teachers use during instruction that lead to learning.
Trying to provide a comprehensive set of guides that teachers will use is like what Tom McArthur said about a project of his, “made going to sea in a sieve look quite safe” (p. vii). At least TMR is started in the hope that at least one teacher will find something to use that leads to at least one person to learn one more lesson than usual. That will make the risk worth the effort and time it has taken to offer this edition.

References

  1. Advice from Ima Learner
  2. A Learners’ View (ALV) of Learning in One Lesson
  3. Hugo, V. (1862). Preface, Les Miserables. Republished as a translation by Charles E. Wilbour in 1991. NY: The Modern Library, p. 11.
  4. McArthur, T. (Ed.), (1992). The Oxford Companion to the English Language. Oxford: Oxford University Press, p. vii.
  5. Meet Ima Learner, a Member of Your Class
  6. Rationed Learning Press Release

Related Readings

  1. A Learners’ View (ALV) not a Learner’s View
  2. Classic Education: A Learners’ View (ALV) of Choices during Teaching and Learning
  3. Frequently Asked Questions about a Learners’ View (ALV)
  4. New Era School Initiative (NESI) Press Release

Originally Drafted: Limited circulation, 2003, as Teachers’ Mobile Learning Reference.

Last Edited: December 20, 2015