Learning or training - you be the judge!

BLUF*: Learning is what learners do - training is what trainers do!

(*Bottom line up front)

Can this concept be any simpler? As a learner I learn, and as a trainer you train me. Do I learn something as a result of your training? I don't know. Whether I do or not is only partially up to you. The rest is up to me.

Do the methods you use to train me excite my interest and generate a desire to learn? The two have to work hand in glove. I can't learn what you are teaching me unless you've given me a reason to be motivated. Otherwise, train away! I'm just going to sit here and pretend to be interested.

You see, learning can't be conscripted. It can only be volunteered, and it is the trainer's job to find ways to make me - and other learners - want to actively participate in the process. Without a learner's active participation a trainer's job is much more difficult to justify.

And here is where we get back to the bottom line: Learning is what I do - training is what you do. We are two sides of the same equation where skills and knowledge (don't talk to me about attitude and behaviours - two things the trainer can't influence) are passed from one to another. You train. I learn (perhaps).

This simple concept has been known since biblical times when God taught Noah what he had to do to survive the coming floods. And it has been reiterated ever since by many learned and wise researchers and practitioners. So why is it that we continue to conflate the two?

I thought the practice of referring to training as learning would be a passing fad, a bit like the idea many years ago that training and facilitating were the same thing (they're not - just read any dictionary). But, no. We continue to see job advertisements for learning and development specialists, or references to a training system as a learning system or model.

I can understand how a training aid might be referred to as a learning aid - that is, an aid to learning - but a training program and a learning program are two entirely different things. One is a program of training while the other is a program of learning. You train. I learn.

This must be confusing for folk for whom English is their second language. It is bad enough when two words are spelled the same but pronounced differently, but when two words with almost diatremically opposite meaning are defined as the same, then it is not surprising that heads are being scratched.

Our cats have learned (there's that word) that if they make a nuisance of themselves at a certain time of day then we had better get up and feed them their favourite food or end up with fur all over the couch. They learned that by closely observing our reaction to their actions. They taught themselves to rub up against us, or sit on the book we are trying to read (or, in one case, to pick a fight with the other two), until they get the food they prefer at a certain time of day. And we have learned to cater to their need. They taught. We learned.

And just like us our cats learned that if they do a certain thing others will react in a way which favours them. We learned that unless we did something to please them then they would continually annoy us. They didn't 'learn' us, and nor did we 'learn' them. Each trained the other that one action will result in a reaction.

And that is the simple truth of our function in life. We are trainers, or teachers (or, gasp! facilitators). There are even courses around which go by various titles, but all say the same thing: they 'train the trainer'. They don't 'learn the learning developers'.

In the VET system there is a qualification - the Certificate IV in TRAINING and Assessment, not LEARNING and Assessment. I hope it isn't necessary to go into scientific explanations as to why the two are separate and distinctly different actions. But, for some, it is apparent that we do.

Will they ever 'learn' or do we have to develop a training program to teach them?