The Learners’ Core (TLC): First Principles of Teaching-Learning (FPTL)

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


Status: First Draft

Last Edited: January 17, 2016

The Learners’ Core (TLC) structures teaching-learning as social processes.

THE LEARNERS’ CORE (TLC) consists of social processes that organize learning during the instruction of lessons. Reports across more than a century of experimental behavioral and social science research studies of teaching and learning have identified common social processes. A finite number of these commonalities describe observable and manageable operations of teachers that result in learners learning lessons. More precisely, TLC refers to social choices as the fewest common social processes that occur while people learn lessons teachers instruct. Without one or more of these choices, learning likely will not occur. These commonalities, choices, serve as First Principles (operational) origins of teaching and learning (FPTL).

Descriptions of choices as operations distinguish TLC from conventional views and theories of teaching and of learning. Conventional views and theories rely on Aristotle’s use of the term ‘first principles’ to refer to origins of theories (Irwin, 1988), that is to beliefs, knowledge, processes, and other aspects of a point of view of causes assumed to occur prior to an inquiry.

FPTL refers to choices as observable social actions of people as they convert what one person does and says into ways that another person does and says it also. Observers can initiate, monitor, and manage these choices (conversions) at the time and place where instruction by teachers converts to learners learning instructed lessons. No assumption of causes of learning is used. The term a learners’ view (ALV) refers to these descriptions when they are considered together. From a learners’ view, choices of teachers and of learners are the keystone linking this set of principles that are basic and fundamental to describing, not theorizing about learning during teaching.

FPTL address the question of how people learn from the view of learners rather than from others views.

  1. The Learners’ Core (TLC) refers to social processes that learners identify and use as physical sensations upon which learners rely while learning.
  2. Learning occurs as social processes.
  3. Principles of Learning (POL) describe social processes learners use during moments of learning.
  4. Learning lessons occurs through observable choices learners make during instruction of lessons.
  5. Teaching (instructing) a lesson occurs when teachers match choices learners will likely make to learn each lesson.

Related Reading

  1. ALV (a Learners’ View) as Description, Theory, or Model
  2. A Learners’ View (ALV) of Learning Defined
  3. ALV Path of Learning
  4. Fundamentals of a Learners’ View (ALV) of Teaching and Learning
  5. Irwin, T. (1988). Aristotle’s First Principles, NY: Clarendon Press of Oxford University Press, pp. 3-4. (Captured December 22, 2015 https://books.google.com/books?id=8tYcp0vYd5EC&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false at 6:15 SMT)