A Learners’ View (ALV) Is Of Choices On the Shortest and Fastest Path to Learning, the Oxygen Of Social Life.
Main Page: Chapter 1 Introduction
Theme: Facts described in research reports by experimental behavioral and social scientists.
A LEARNERS’ VIEW (ALV) CONSISTS OF FACTS (some still in note format) that describe observable actions people use to learn. Behavioral and social scientists have described increasing refinements of these facts for more than a century. These facts leave interpretations, discussions, and opinions about learning and education to others.
These facts appear consistent with theories of society described by Talcott Parsons and George Homans, with the school of symbolic interaction described by sociologists such as Charles H. Cooley, W.I. Thomas, and George Herbert Mead, and with descriptions of exchanges and transactions reported by economists.
Novelist, song writers, poets and other scribes and bards have referred to these actions for eons before and while science existed.
Empirical evidence does not exist to say that learning occurs by only inferring non-sensed phenomena or by flooding a lesson with resources. So, descriptions in Classic Education on this site do not refer to beliefs, best practice, cognition, conventional practice, ideas, information, knowledge, mental activity, thinking, etc. Nor does the application of ALV require these inferences or other conventional wisdom and folklore about eduation.
You may test this conclusion. Remove any one or more of the behavior patterns of ALV and then try to respond to the request, Tell me only obserable steps people take to learn … Please tell us how you can do so successfully.
References
Cooley, C. H. (1902). Human Nature and the Social Order. New York: Scribner.
Homans, G. (1969). The sociological relevance of behaviorism. In R. Burgess & D. Bushell, Behavioral Sociology: The Experimental Analysis of Social Process. NY: Columbia University Press, (pp. 1-26).
Mead, G. H. (1934). Mind, Self, and Society. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Parsons, T. (1951). The Social System. Glencoe, IL: The Free Press.
Thomas, W. I., and Znaniecki, F. (1918–1920). The Polish Peasant in Europe and America, 5 vols. Boston: Badger.
Thomas, W. I. (1931). The Unadjusted Girl. Boston: Little, Brown.
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The Straightest Path to Learning
Last Edited: June 21, 2016