My name is Robert W. Heiny, Ph.D. There are three of us in the United States with that name. I’m the one who held appointments as a senior faculty member or research scientist at Brandeis University, University of North Carolina – Chapel Hill, and Peabody College (now of Vanderbilt University).
I have been interested in how people learn since I was 2 1/2 years old. I remember the moment.
Mrs. King, next to whom I was sitting in church on a hard, uncomfortable walnut pew, told me to sit still. I looked around and saw other people sitting still, then asked myself, “What do they do to know to sit still part of the time and stand or sing other times?”
Suddenly, my world had changed with the instruction, “Sit still.” I then had only two choices instead of whatever else I did. One choice was to do what others do or did. The other choice was to do something else and (probably, is the word I use today; I don’t remember what word I used then, but it included uncertainty) have some kind of “trouble” (some might call it adventure).
That morning I tested the idea that only these two choices existed. I learned quickly that one came with pleasant and one with unpleasant consequences.
Now, seven plus decades later as a former teacher, professor, and business partner, I see that in an unexpected moment I had started on a life long path of trial-and-errors that refined into research and scholarship about social aspects of learning and education. This path remains unfinished.
I thought I had finished when I retired for the second time. Then, someone who wanted to know promptly, asked me, “How do people learn? Tell me what I can see and hear people do step-by-step to learn.” Colleagues of the caller had paid out over a million dollars to education and psychology “experts” without coming up with an answer. I was a respectful, last ditch, free, longshot for an answer.
I could not answer the question and could not identify a single source based on experimental, empirical behavioral or social science research studies that could. Anecdotes, speculations, theories, philosophies of learning or education, single studies, and pedagogies all failed to satisfy the questioner.
A Learners’ View (ALV) of Choices during Teaching and Learning: A Classic Education began as an effort to address the “Tell Me …” request, so that you and other educators may use it to the benefit of learners with whom you have contact.
This response is sometimes more pedantic than romantic. It consists of a technical-scientific literacy of learning. It gives priority to descriptions of learning reported by experimental empirical behavioral and social scientists.
Application of these descriptions permit more accurate and precise lessons while making them transparent for parents, novice teachers as well as observers and to challenge at the same time even the most informed professional.
This site consists of descriptions of empirical facts of what people do to learn. I’ve tried to make them accurate and sufficient to indicate their potential use. I’ve also tried to arrange descriptions in the order that experimental behavioral and social scientists report they occur.
As you read beyond this site, you will likely come across refinements of these descriptions and steps in learning. That’s appropriate, just as a freshman physics major makes adjustments to earn a Ph.D. in astrophysics and cosmology.
ALV does not include explanations, opinions about the usefulness of behavioral and social science studies of learning, or provide optional views or counterpoints. This site does not attempt to persuade beyond letting the facts speak for themselves. Whatever shortcomings exist here, at least you have something to modify.
I wish I had had a site like this to review and extend my classic education. I am increasingly grateful that my teachers and colleagues taught me what I should do to learn classic content in classic ways. It’s been a useful touchstone for adapting to a rapidly changing global way of life.
Their lessons decades ago have allowed me to meet and learn from people who lived in garbage dumps as well as the heads of governments, businesses, scholarship, and religions in at least 60 countries.
In return, I am trying to pass their lessons forward to you and others, so that you may also adapt their lessons to your time.