Chapter 1 Introduction

Connect The Dots

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


Status: Rewriting in progress

Last Edited: February 10, 2019

Theme: When learning, learners make choices on the shortest and fastest path to learning.

Summary: A learners’ view of teaching and learning is of the 15 sets of observable patterns of choices by learners of their social interactions while learning during teachers’ instruction of lessons. These sets consist of the minimum number and kinds of observable, manageable, and measurable choices learners make while learning. Learning is the adaptation, adoption, and application of choices that the most accomplished people in society make to learn the same lessons. Learning occurs in a moment on the shortest and fastest path of choices to learn. These patterns describe a language of learning (LANOL) that organizes the physical sensations learners use while learning. When teachers use this language during instruction, learners accelerate, increase, and deepen learning (AID) promptly. Scientists have reported these patterns without these names in publications of experimental behavioral and social science research studies of learning and teaching for more than a century.

Summary 2.0:The purpose of instruction of lessons is to increase the value of choices by learners for assimilation into society. 

This book introduces a learners’ code for teaching lessons that all learners learn. This code answers one of the fundamental questions of teachers: How do people learn; What do they do first, second, etc.? The question is of how learners connect what they do while learning with what teachers do while instructing lessons. A learners’ code answers this question from a learners’ view of instruction by using a sociology of learning, a branch of the natural sciences. This view gives teachers a probability based, social process driven (a systematic, empirically based, systemic) strategy to account for learning lessons. Accounting for learning uses the Triple-Helix of Teaching-Learning (THTL) during instruction without referring to cognition or other personal attributes. This helix is of functionally defined and described social interactions that behavioral and social scientists have described in common across more than a century of experimental studies of teaching and learning.  The most important point of a learners code is to teach and discuss lessons by using vocabulary that addresses a learners’ view of teaching-learning. This view refers to how learners translate instruction into academic performances used to assimilate into society and also obtain life chances and social benefits as do the most accomplished members of society.

This book introduces a learners’ code for teaching lessons that all learners learn. This code answers one of the fundamental questions of teachers: How do people learn; What do they do first, second, etc.? The question is of how learners connect what they do while learning with what teachers do while instructing lessons. A learners’ code answers this question from a learners’ view of instruction by using a sociology of learning, a branch of the natural sciences. This view gives teachers a probability based, social process driven (a systematic, empirically based, systemic) strategy to account for learning lessons. Accounting for learning uses the Triple-Helix of Teaching-Learning (THTL) during instruction without referring to cognition or other personal attributes. This helix is of functionally defined and described social interactions that behavioral and social scientists have described in common across more than a century of experimental studies of teaching and learning.  The most important point of a learners code is to teach and discuss lessons by using vocabulary that addresses a learners’ view of teaching-learning. This view refers to how learners translate instruction into academic performances used to assimilate into society and also obtain life chances and social benefits as do the most accomplished members of society.

The purpose of instruction of lessons is to increase the value of choices by learners for assimilation into society. 

This book introduces a learners’ code for teaching lessons that all learners learn. This code answers one of the fundamental questions of teachers: How do people learn; What do they do first, second, etc.? The question is of how learners connect what they do while learning with what teachers do while instructing lessons. A learners’ code answers this question from a learners’ view of instruction by using a sociology of learning, a branch of the natural sciences. This view gives teachers a probability based, social process driven (a systematic, empirically based, systemic) strategy to account for learning lessons. Accounting for learning uses the Triple-Helix of Teaching-Learning (THTL) during instruction without referring to cognition or other personal attributes. This helix is of functionally defined and described social interactions that behavioral and social scientists have described in common across more than a century of experimental studies of teaching and learning.  The most important point of a learners code is to teach and discuss lessons by using vocabulary that addresses a learners’ view of teaching-learning. This view refers to how learners translate instruction into academic performances used to assimilate into society and also obtain life chances and social benefits as do the most accomplished members of society.

The task for this report is to describe learning according to learners. Teachers implicitly use this view when students learn their instructed lessons. Teachers may use this view intentionally to accelerate, increase, and deepen (AID) learning promptly.

This perspective may be referred to as a learners’ view (ALV) of teaching-learning. This view is a property of society rather than of individuals. It consists of the social elements described in common across empirical experimental research reports of teaching and learning for over a century. This view is consistent with a natural science perspective of how people learn.

From a learners’ view, teaching and learning are inextricably linked. This link may be referred to as organic teaching-learning formed by the least number and kinds of social interactions that people make when learning instructed lessons occur. The content of this view consists of descriptions of procedures reported in common for over a century by experimental behavioral and social scientists that they and their subjects have been using during studies of teaching and learning.

With this view, teaching is a function of learners learning instructed lessons. Learning drives teaching. Teaching begins when learning lessons begin. Teaching creates and manages the social conditions when learning will more likely happen.

A learners’ view accounts for what teachers do during instruction of lessons that learners learn and how these ways affect the structure of society.

Teachers who use these ways systematically increase the likelihood that learners will learn instructed lessons promptly. This account is atheoritical, and features the vocabulary and relationships of social interaction during teaching-learning.

Teachers, philosophers, theorists, and others implicitly use these descriptions to conduct their social roles. A learners’ view of teaching-learning does not infer or refer to cognition, motivation, brain functions, and other ways of discussing individuals and their personal behavior.

These commonalities consist of simple patterns of elements of social interaction that account for learning during instruction of lessons. These common patterns are to learning as the phrase do-re-me is to music; they refer to  relationships among parts of social activities during instruction and learning.

Accounting for learning consist of identifying and describing choices of social interaction patterns that teachers and learners each make independently while performing their respective social roles.

Commonalities of choices by role holders across experimental research reports form principles of learning. Principles refer to the presence of patterns of social interaction that occur across purposes of each reported research study.

These principles refer to the greater power of the more than a century long reporting of commonalities among experimental studies than of the educated guesses of individual educators and their well meaning instructional practices.

A Learners’ View of Learning

A learners’ view of learning consists of 15 sets of social interactions during learning. These sets occur in observable, manageable, and measurable patterns that  teachers use by plan or by chance when learners learn lessons. To an undetermined extent, this learning process (sometimes called adapting, socialization, training, etc.) occurs throughout daily social life.

Patterns of social interaction that learners view form a technical foundation for identifying what teachers do when people learn instructed lessons. This foundation links learning to social benefits learners obtain and to their life chances.

Teachers use this foundation regularly when they instruct lessons. Other professionals rely on these same patterns to administer programs, test theories, and discuss philosophies of learning.

Educators and scientists also use these patterns and this foundation to analyze, forecast, and monetize learning and its links to other aspects of human life.

These elements form hierarchies of probabilities. A learners’ view makes transparent the rank ordering of contributions that instructional efforts and tasks will likely have on leveling-up the social benefits and life chances of learners to match those of the most accomplished members of society.

This view of learning has an inescapable aspect of human relationships that influences social life from schooling to the vehicles we drive, the television shows we watch, the ambitions we follow, and the social benefits we obtain as well as our life-chances.

Yet, for all of its presence, learning remains one of the most used and the least agreed upon definitions of words in nonscientific vocabulary.

When reading through descriptions of learning from a learners’ view, consider their logic and relationships as well as the principles they form. Weigh their merits for increasing learning your lessons, then choose when and how to use them during your instruction.

Depending on how teachers use them during instruction, they result in a social egalitarianism of learning rather than the more common meritocracy.

A learners’ view (ALV) of learning serves as a foundation of education as an institution of society along with economics, family, and similar ways of considering how people organize human behavior.

This view consists of technical descriptions of predictable choices learners make. Learners make these choices during social interaction. Descriptions of these interactions do not require referring to cognition, emotion, motivation, and other inferences, theories, beliefs, or philosophies of learning.

Descriptions of a learners’ view refer to results of a qualitative analysis of the content of experimental behavioral and social science research reports over more than a century. This analysis identified commonalities across these reports. Together, these commonalities provide an empirical and intellectual consistency of which choices learners make while learning lessons of teachers.

These commonalities account for what you as teacher do during instruction of lessons that one or more learners learn. Descriptions are presented for you to use to refine what you do when you intend for all learners you instruct to learn your lessons.

A learners’ view of learning consists of 15 sets of active ingredients of learning (AIL) from which learners make choices when they learn lessons instructed by teachers. Ingredients consist of physical sensations and social purposes, actions, norms, as well as values.

From this view, lessons of teachers present problems for learners to solve by choosing a finite set of social interactions for learners to perform. Instruction of lessons consists of teachers showing learners which social actions to choose and perform in order to solve the problem in a way that the most accomplished people of society solve them. Each solution for each problem in this sense can be reduced to connecting to dots.

Together these ingredients unify the minimum commonalities that experimental behavioral and social scientists report in their studies of learning and of teaching over more than a century.

Purpose of this Project

The purpose of this project is to answer the question, How do people learn; what do they do first, second, etc.? This question contrasts with the popular conception that learning is a mystery with many answers to such questions. Educators who hold to the mystery concept address teaching an imprecise and sometimes inaccurate art, not an applied science nor a technical craft.

A learners’ view of learning frames (gives structure to) answers to the How question. This frame clarifies parts of lessons learners use when learning instructed lessons. Clarification is by stating agreed upon empirical facts and principles of learning in mostly qualitative terms that teachers may use to instruct lessons.

This project starts with the premise that learning occurs in predictable ways that experimental scientists have reported and that teachers can apply to accelerate, increase, and deepen (AID) learning promptly.

This view refers to commonalities of learners and teachers identified through a qualitative analysis of learning and teaching reported by experimental behavioral and social scientists over more than a century. This view stands in contrast to others such as those referred to as research or theory based instruction that result from a different method of assembling their models.

A learners’ view consists of an empirical framework of choices by learners implicit across their uncounted studies of learning and teaching conducted by experimental behavioral and social scientists for more than a century. To conduct these studies, experimenters systematically recorded choices learners and teachers made to solve various problems.

It carries forward choices of learners into descriptions of how instruction of lessons has consequences for learners. It has the potential to affect their life-chances and other social benefits they earn through learning.

That misconception is considered nonsense by people familiar with the processes and results of experimental behavioral and social science research reported for more than a century.

Chapter 1 introduces the vocabulary of learning and its relationships as social phenomena that form learning according to learners, more frequently called a learners’ view (ALV) of learning.

This vocabulary describes how teachers use what learners do, so that lessons accelerate, increase, and deepen (AID) learning promptly. Teachers and others can use this view to observe, discuss, manage, and measure changes in learning as instruction changes.

To report what people do while learning, scientists describe activities they and others can observe and measure. This site features notes that describe a learners’ view (ALV) of learning as described by commonalities across experimental behavioral and social science reports of learning. ALV gives priority to what learners do while learning lessons teachers instruct. Learners make choices. From this view, learning occurs as a social phenomenon: a social process that teachers can observe, manage, and measure. This view links teaching to the distribution of life chances of learners without resorting to theoretical interpretations.

The new era of teaching unifies and focuses the bits and pieces of instructional practices teachers use when learners learn their lessons. Unification gives priority to the technical-scientific literacy of learning that educators use when learners learn.

Learning in this new era not only fulfills the unwritten social expectation for public education, but appears to have the capacity to transform society into a more egalitarian one.

A Word about Science, Technology, Learning, and Teaching

At their core, science, technology, learning, and teaching are social activities. Science is the discipline of social processes to investigate social activities; technology provides the capacity both to perform those social processes and to observe, manage, and measure them; learning is the adaptation, adoption, and demonstration by learners of performing new social processes in ways that solve social problems; and teaching is showing learners how to solve those problems in ways that society accepts or at least tolerates.

The science of learning as with most human endeavors occurs through the priorities with which scientists address the ways people interact among themselves and with their environment.

Scientists have studied learning for over a century. They have addressed it in either of two forms of human interaction: (1) people interact as individuals with their various similarities and differences, and (2) human interaction forms aggregates of people with certain commonalities.

Most educators and their supporters address learning through the lens of individuals and individual differences.This report addresses the science of learning through the lens of aggregates of learners. It describes learning as occurring in schools through social interaction among teachers and learners.

This view accounts for choices learners make at the moment they learn lessons of teachers. This accounting identifies how learners choose their place in society. It does so without referring to cognition, motivation, and other terms used by teachers and other theorists of learning as a function of individuals.

People learn. That’s a commonly accepted statement in and out of schools. People do not agree in theory or practice what learners do first, second, etc. to learn lessons that teachers instruct.

Behavioral and social science reports of experimental studies of learning and teaching for more than a century have contained in common descriptions of choices people make. It describes sets of choices and their relationships according to learners.

Choices of learners range from selecting physical senses to which to attend to selecting which value systems their choices relate. Lessons that address these choices are likely to accelerate, increase, and deepen (AID) learning promptly and sometimes dramatically.

This

describes a learners’ view of learning lessons that teachers instruct. According to learners, they make a finite set of choices of social actions to take to solve a problem as teachers instruct them to do. These choices are the core of learning centered lessons.

Learning according to Observers

In the broadest sense, psychologists and others who have studied learning have deepened and enriched our understanding of it as a function of individuals. They have commonly observed and described what people do while learning.

On group of psychologists referred to as behaviorists limit their professional activity to reporting descriptions of patterns of what they see, hear, and in other ways use their physical senses to observe.

Another group extends such descriptions to interpreting their observations in various ways. With this second group’s view, they account for learning by discussing cognition, personalities, motivations, etc. which cannot be observed directly.

Each of these views relies on observations for their descriptions. The second view adds interpretation to describe what they cannot use physical senses to identify and describe directly.

These two views are so pervasive that it is uncommon for teachers to consider how people learn without referring to one or more of these views of individual behavior and learning.

For over a century, experimental behavioral and social scientists have been examining aspects of how individuals learn. Their studies have resulted in an integrated set of principles of behavior. This integration rests on systematically varying and testing theories of how people learn.

A qualitative analysis of those experiments reveals four commonalities among learners irrespective of their age, intelligence, and other personal attributes. (1) Learners make choices from among 15 sets of options while learning. (2) These experiments identify which choices learners make first, second, etc.? (3) Learners’ choices occur while interacting with teachers during instruction of lessons. And (4) Learners are more likely to learn lessons of  teachers who address these choices during instruction.

Learning according to Learners: A Learners’ View

These commonalities, by that definition, demonstrate that learning occurs as social interaction

In generally, sociologists and others who study relationships between individuals and society assume theories of individuals to account for socialization of people into society.

How do teachers while instructing a lesson answer the question, How do teachers know which part of instruction some learners used while learning and others did not? How do teachers know that their answer accounts for people learning the next lesson? How do teachers choose to adjust instruction while instructing as well as before offering that lesson again?

These questions go to the core of teaching both as a profession and as its role in society. For example, what do you do during instruction so that all learners can when they choose to do so participate in society as the most accomplished people participate in and out of schools?

Learners’ View (ALV) refers to choices people make while learning lessons. These choices do for learning from teaching what musical notes do for singers of songs composed by someone else. Song composers choose sound frequencies to form their compositions.

With this view, teachers compose their lessons from choices of sound frequencies and other ingredients of daily social life.

Teaching combines the science of social life (the discipline of procedures), and technology of instruction (the discipline of capability) with the craft of choosing lesson content (subject matter). Composing and  teaching lessons that people learn consists of applying the sciences of instruction with the science of learning as social processes with choices of subject matter (content). These three form a triple helix of learning. When combined as reported by experimental behavioral and social scientists, learners will likely accelerate, increase, and deepen (AID) learning to the point of everyone learning those lessons. Learning from a learners’ view occurs when learners solve problems as do the most accomplished members of society. From this view, learning serves society as a social oxygen the way the chemical element Oxygen serves biology.

Preview of Use of a Learners’ View (ALV) of Teaching and Learning Sample descriptions of results by teachers instructing with a learners’ view (ALV) of learning

Primer of A Learners’ View of Choices during Teaching and Learning A Learners’ View (ALV) refers to choices people make while learning lessons. These choices do for learning from teaching what musical notes do for singers of songs composed by someone else.

A Learners’ View (ALV): A Quick Summary ALV identifies relationships among common choices during teaching that increase chances of learners learning lessons. These relationships are grounded in commonalities across more than a century of experimental behavioral and social science research reports of learning.

ALV Law of Teaching-Learning (LOTL) A learners’ view features a law of teaching-learning. This law describes 15 choice-points that predict the likelihood of learning occurring from lessons taught by teachers. This prediction rests on ALV representing the shortest and fastest path to learning.

Just the Facts A learners’ view (ALV) gives priority to common facts described in research reports of learning by experimental behavioral and social scientists.

Learning and a Learners’ View (ALV) The word learning, from a learners’ view (ALV), represents social processes people use to connect two or more dots that solves one or more problems.

A Learners’ View (ALV) in One Sentence Choices people make while learning during instruction of lessons.

In One Lesson: A Learners’ View (ALV) of Choices during Teaching and Learning When you learn from instruction, you use a learners’ view (ALV) of a path of choices you make during instruction.

A Learners’ View (ALV) not a Learner’s View Distinguishing learning as social processes of choice from conventional inferences from behavior of cognition of individuals.

Seven Fast Facts of a Learners’ View (ALV) ALV gives priority to the how over what is learned.

Teach Like Learners Learn Choose to teach by including choices that learners will likely make while learning instructed lessons.

Meet Ima Learner, a Member of Your Class You know me as Aki, Keisha, Jorge, Ahmed, Kim, and with other names of people in and out of your classes. I personify the minimum (without inference, interpretation, nuance, or decoration) of what is common across more than a century of experimental behavioral and social science research descriptions of learning.

A Letter to Learners You hold a crucial position in education and play a vital part in society.

A Learners’ View (ALV) of School Reform The social purpose of schooling and school reform is to reduce the number of trial-and-errors by learners during lessons, so that all learners learn all lessons consistently.

Keynote to Learning as Social Oxygen Learning is an element of social life that combines with other social elements (of economics, politics, religion, etc.) to form social action beyond that of any of their parts.

Unanswered Questions about Learning and Education A learners’ view (ALV) raises as well as leaves some questions unanswered. They go beyond the scope of commonalities across existing experimental behavioral and social science research results.

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they interact with lessons instructed by teachers.

for  analyzing and applying common choices that learners make when they translate instruction into learning lessons of teachers. This framework provides a way to observe how choices of teachers affects the people they teach. It provides a way to trace how instruction of lessons influences the distribution of life chances and benefits of learners in society.

This view accounts for minimum common observations scientists use when they study learning and teaching.

It describes, discusses, and demonstrates social actions that learners use in common while learning lessons that teachers instruct. Behavioral and social scientists refer to these commonalities as operationalization of hypotheses they test in experiments. Operations of experiments  consist of experimenters asking people as subjects of study to make choices. Scientists observe their choices in order to identify which ones they make under which conditions.

Those operations are referred to as a learners’ view (ALV) of learning.

This view occurs before and is the factual basis that scientists and others use to test inferences made with theories such as of cognition, mental abilities, and motivation of individuals.

A learners’ view consists of choices learners make at the moment they learn lessons of teachers. This accounting identifies how learners make their place in society.