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Learning and a Learners' View (ALV)

Robert Heiny

Research Scientist of Learning and Education
Flight Instructor
The word learning represents the process each person uses to find and complete incomplete patterns in their own behavior that others can observe. From a learners' view, learning is a constant part of social life as is oxygen.

ALV addresses the question, How do people learn? Tell me what learners do first, second, etc. to learn something.

ALV permits answering the question this way: Learners connect dots (colors, movements, sounds, etc. identifiable by an observer) they see, hear, or in other ways sense in order to solve problems (to complete incomplete behavior patterns) they face, whether small or large.

As described by experimental empirical behavioral scientists, learning occurs through a sequence of choices people make at 15 points in order to complete a pattern (solve a problem), such as to name numerals in a common sequence from one to zero or make water from hydrogen and oxygen.

Learning occurs in one step (connecting the last two dots that complete a pattern) through trial-and-error (choosing the dots that complete the behavior pattern is the second choice); that one-step has three parts (a beginning, a middle, and an end that have three more choices) with four levels that result in one or more of five kinds of behavior patterns.

This sequence represents what is common across more than 12 decades of research. Behavioral scientists do not yet have common descriptions (beyond trial-and-error) of the dynamics of learning. For example, what trade-offs will people make of their time, attention, effort, etc. to learn how to do which things?

Their studies have given priority to how over what is learned. Their descriptions form an infrastructure of learning. By monitoring activity in this structure, observers see, hear, and anticipate forms and changes in personal and social life.

The parts of this infrastructure allow more precise descriptions, predictions, and use of their elements, and thus of learning. These parts are to learning and social life as sound frequencies are to music and particles are to physics.

Uses of ALV discount whether learning occurs in the brain and mind or through changes in patterns of observable behavior. Visit the Original Blog Post
 
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