What is Education?- A thread on learning and teaching, the creative process, practice

[marct]

Hi BB,

Something I just wanted to throw out as a point of conversation. There does need to be some clarity in terminology at some point. "Education" is probably expected to be some form of holistic type of intellectual improvement.

Totally agree on getting a common language . "Intellectual" improvement? Hmm, personally, I wouldn't limit it to to intellectual.

I would like to propose one delineation within the terminology, and that is the difference between "training" and "learning".

"Learning" would be new skill acquisition: I don't know how to knit, and therefore would need to learn how to knit. It's a new skill. Similarly, although I know a bit about statistics, there are still many things to learn, and although I know something about structural equation models, there's still more I could learn.

"Training" would be skill rehearsal: I'm am practicing something I already know. I've fired a lot of M16s/M4s. Going to the range isn't learning for me, it's training.

Hmm, much as I appreciate the way you've laid it out, I still would have to disagree with you.

First off, "training" and "learning" (despite PPT influence neologisms) are actually from different stances. "Learning" if from the stance of the receiver / interpreter, while "training" is from the "instructor's" stance. Having tried to learn how to knit, I know that what I need to do is rehearse; I just put knitting pretty far down the line of what I "need" to know.

Basically, what I'm saying is that "training" and "education" are both from the instructor stance, while "learning" is from the receiver stance. I can "learn" from either type of situation but, just because I am learning, doesn't mean that I am being either "educated" or "trained".

Now it's possible to train one thing while learning another - training squad patrolling while learning about cultural sensitivity or IED reaction drills.

Totally agree. It's possible to train in any subject while the student learns how to sleep with their eyes open as well .

Dropping the sillyness (yes, Wilf, it's one of THOSE days for me), we, as in any group of people, can decide what someone should be trained in. These are often called "learning objectives", which is all fine and dandy. However, baring certain fairly specific types of skills (e.g. repetitive tasks operating in a high predictive validity area of knowledge), we really can't exercise that much control over what our students actually learn.

I just wanted to throw out an idea to try and keep the vocabulary cleaned up a bit, rather than argue over how people are using certain synonyms for similar, but distinct, concepts.

Thoughts?

Totally appreciate it . While we play with terms, we are actually clarifying a common, group understanding of what we, as a group, mean by them at the conceptual level. One other point I just want to toss out is that I really doubt how distinct, at least in the either/or sense that is often associated with that word, many of these concepts are.

For example, I have taught (another word we might want to add into the mix), students to perform mechanical analytic sequences which they have been able to do perfectly in a variety of settings without being able to interpret what the implications of their results are. Now, I would call what they received (learned if you will) "training" even though my intention was "education" (in this instance, being able to extrapolate from the mechanical manipulations performed).

Cheers,

Marc