So I was intrigued with Allan's post yesterday about his Crucial Conversations training. Just in case Allan stops reading after three sentences I'll put a nudge nudge, hint hint in here that I'd like to go this training to experience it for myself (pretty pretty please). Now that that's taken care of I should state first of all that I have a M.Ed and am back to working toward my PhD in education as well. Maybe we people are just nuts and like to think things through but I consider myself a pretty logical thinker.
From Allan's post I take that the Crucial Conversations training he went to basically provided a model for collaboration with an audience that (could possibly) have differing objectives, view points, personalities, etc. I always want to know more about this because I work with a wide audience (students, faculty, and other staff in my day job; parents, kids, and even Air Force officers in my volunteer work). Communication, understanding, and collaboration are vital in all aspects.
Now I want to get really personal with Allan's post. He said, "the trainer said (paraphrasing) "education doesn't work, you have to put what you've learned into practice"." I fully agree with Allan's response (and I don't have to... we both value differing views... in fact we enjoy them because we usually learn more). Allan said, "...I disagree with this statement in that my idea of education includes putting what you have heard, seen, tried, discovered, etc... into practice."
So that statement brings me to the title of this entry. Did, perhaps, the instructor mean instruction and not education? I can understand if you don't learn something from simple classroom instruction. You can learn basic concepts... the "how things will be in an ideal situation." But can that instruction even come close to preparing you for a real-world experience? Education seems much broader. I may have learned something in the classroom, but I don't consider myself fully educated on the subject until I'm able to take everything and put it into practice for myself.
I know maybe I'm going to come across nitpicky but my class this semester is on adult learning theory and in three weeks I've had to question what "learning" is, what "experience" is and how giving someone the facts is not necessarily telling someone the truth.
I've just added "education" to my questionable list. This should be fun.
From Allan's post I take that the Crucial Conversations training he went to basically provided a model for collaboration with an audience that (could possibly) have differing objectives, view points, personalities, etc. I always want to know more about this because I work with a wide audience (students, faculty, and other staff in my day job; parents, kids, and even Air Force officers in my volunteer work). Communication, understanding, and collaboration are vital in all aspects.
Now I want to get really personal with Allan's post. He said, "the trainer said (paraphrasing) "education doesn't work, you have to put what you've learned into practice"." I fully agree with Allan's response (and I don't have to... we both value differing views... in fact we enjoy them because we usually learn more). Allan said, "...I disagree with this statement in that my idea of education includes putting what you have heard, seen, tried, discovered, etc... into practice."
So that statement brings me to the title of this entry. Did, perhaps, the instructor mean instruction and not education? I can understand if you don't learn something from simple classroom instruction. You can learn basic concepts... the "how things will be in an ideal situation." But can that instruction even come close to preparing you for a real-world experience? Education seems much broader. I may have learned something in the classroom, but I don't consider myself fully educated on the subject until I'm able to take everything and put it into practice for myself.
I know maybe I'm going to come across nitpicky but my class this semester is on adult learning theory and in three weeks I've had to question what "learning" is, what "experience" is and how giving someone the facts is not necessarily telling someone the truth.
I've just added "education" to my questionable list. This should be fun.
Asking questions is a lot of fun ... searching for the answers is even better. I'm thrilled to see you still pushing towards a doctorate. Some of words you are thinking about would make excellent "Community Questions" ... perhaps I'll borrow some of those to see what people around the web are thinking?
Good post!
Good point! One of the struggles with the recent online thermodynamics course has been figuring out what students have to do on the homework. It wasn't until I saw problems in analyzing data that I began to understand what the purpose for those pages of equations (with calculus yet) that the textbook lists.
The soul of thermodynamics WERE the skills, not memorizing equations, and I think that's essentially true for all academic disciplines.
What's interesting though is how many instructors do think of their content in terms of "content" (just the facts/equations) instead of skills (how to use that equation in a realistic way).