I have been working on a project for another class, and the topic of education v. training came up. For some reason this interested me. I guess it's because I never looked at them as two different things....training is education right? Well for this discussion education was defined as gaining conceptual or historical knowledge; while training is designed to learn a specific task. In general, learning why is considered education, and learning how woud be training. I debated whether a learning event could be both elements of education and training, and overall I believe they could contain both. Others I have talked to from a business perspective basically say they could care less if the event is training or education, as long as the objective of making the company better is achieved.
I partially agree, which I guess means I disagree. Business is about making money, plain and simple. Teaching an assembler in a factory how to put together a product might provide you a good worker, but I contend that teaching the same assembler why the parts fit together a certain way gets you an engaged employee and someone you can count on to see errors in the process. So in the end, should an organization train, educate or both train and educate employees? Does it matter what industry you are in?
As for self-directed learning, do you learn best by being trained or being educated? Are their times when you only want to know how to do something, but not why? My wife would argue that because I never read the instructions to anything I'm after what I perceive to be the fastest way to put something together....in other words, show me how to do it and get out of my way. But in the end, shouldn't I want to know why parts are going together a certain way...that is if I want to be able to tell if the item is going together correctly. Maybe that's why many supervisors and managers never bother to provide detailed instructions to their employees....maybe that's why I never did? If we never want direction isn't it logical to assume that nobody else does either? Well, I was wrong....
Just some food for thought....
Aging Might Not Be Inevitable
6 months ago
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Interesting thoughts...
I would contend that an event can be training and education both. I think back to the many "trainings" I went to and could testify that I learned how to better do a task (which is training) but also learned the history of that methodology (which would be education). I think if you are learning historically how something was developed, what it was based upon or looking at data showing its effectiveness, that is education. Learning how to apply that information to a task is training. Making the performance of that task better is the result of the training.
I think companies should send their employees to training and encourage education. Sending an employee to training helps with their performance of a task and education would help them have a higher comfort level and understanding since they would know "why" something is that way and could help others by explaining the "why" to them. I think having education develops the employee and they reach a higher commitment level and could possibly affect their job satisfaction and ultimately, their retention.
This discussion gets into a very gray area for instructional designers - what does the learner need to know vs. everything there is to know. When you talk with a subject matter expert, they'll tell you everything there is to know about why certain legislation was passed and what it means to the industry as a whole. But really the learner just needs to know that the maximum contribution level has been raised to $5,000.
At the same time, the issue we face here at Principal is that people only know the letter of their job. They don't know the "why" so things get missed that shouldn't have. Now are training is trying to encompass a little more of the why without too much overkill.
Good discussion topic Roger.
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