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People learn from teaching by both learners and teachers making choices. More specifically, learners make choices during lessons that teachers choose to match, thus joining learning with teaching. I taught, watched teachers teach, taught teachers ways to teach, directed and oversaw programs, and systematically studied teaching in and out of schools. One lasting impression is how little time and attention in school lessons and in the teacher preparation sequence is given to descriptions of the processes of learning and of how people learn and related research, including of learning from teaching. More time was given, for example, to designing classroom project assignments and classroom management than to describing how and specifically what people learn from those projects. From undergraduate through doctoral studies, I heard talk among students that classes titled Learning or sections of classes that addressed learning were rumored to be “hard”, and to be avoided whenever possible. I remember from my earliest attendance as a preschooler through working with doctoral students and their faculty that something fundamental was missing from schools and schooling. Looking back, I nor others I knew or read could describe data based descriptions of what learners did while learning and how those actions fit into society. In other words, the practices and literature about learning and teaching lacked the specificity and precision so that a teacher could observe, manage, and adjust a lesson on-the-fly in order to AID learning confidently. It took a question from someone in industry to identify for me that missing topic and how the lack of its identification helped to explained the continuing rumors of hard classes and the generation of theories and less rigorous speculations about learning and teaching. The trail to ALV was long with many steps.
Classic Education
The job of educators with any name or title is to AID learning promptly and efficiently. This site describes samples of how educators choose whether or not learners accomplish what is possible to learn today. That is, for all learners to learn lessons of teachers. Classic Education: A Learners’ View (ALV) of Choices during Teaching and Learning, this site, describes specific choices learners and teachers make during lessons that learners learn. ALV represents common choices learners will likely make while learning. It’s a plural possessive part of speech, not a single view of a person. Its purpose is to bridge the gap between theories and practices about learning and societies, and results obtained from the teaching of students in and out of schools. ALV is for use by educators and learners. It is not just to read and discuss. When educators use these descriptions to design and instruct lessons they will likely accelerate, increase, and deepen (AID) learning promptly and efficiently.
Learning and the Social Institution of Education
ALV rests on the premise that education exists as a social institution, with a variety of organizations and practices. Those who teach and in other ways generate that which people learn participate in education, just as teachers who use their income to purchase bread participate in the economy. The central use and contribution of education for society is for educators to convey to the less accomplished what the most accomplished people have done and can do. Thus, the first and foremost task for educators is to make sure learners learn how to learn, including how the most accomplished learn. From this view, education exists to produce results in other social institutions, such as in the economy, family, politics, and religions. It follows that to the extent that teaching and exercises in schools and other programs can demonstrate such results, they validate the existence of learning from teaching as part of the social institution of education. In this way, educators generate costs to society when students do not learn to do what the most accomplished have done and can do.
On this day, the throng of people includes a young bride posing with Goofy as her groom and their bridal party watch, some taking selfies with their smartphones in front of the nearby animated character Prince Charming from the Disney movie Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. Dozens of little girls ages maybe 2 to 30ish years old and little boys from 2 to fifty plus years old sport Merlin the Magician hats and other Disney mood clothing blend into the strolling guests passing he wedding party.