Mr. Raju, Namaskar! Ms Devos, hello!
What a joy to get a reply to my question from India! I lived in Pune
for many years.
I agree that teaching provides teachers opportunities to learn, not
only through preparation to teach or in the act of teaching, but also
in dialog with students. In some cases this will occur through "shared
reflections", as Raju points out, but also through processes of
academic argument where differences exist, and through the
co-construction of new or alternative meanings. However, I'm not sure
that training provides a more "active" reflective or insightful
response by learners than teaching does. The degree of dialog that the
teacher/student or trainer/student co-create would seem more pertinent
than something inherent in either teaching or training to me. Perhaps
you could elaborate on what you find different between teaching and
training that "activates" learning more in training from your
perspective, Raju.
Personal narratives and stories of situated experience provide
information in context, which I often find more transferable to my own
situation than the results of laboratory studies about +decision
making strategy" or +persuasion+, so I agree with Raju about the
importance of sharing reflections and insights about a particular
subject.
My dilemma is trying to decide whether to provide my staff with a
program that +teaches+ them about communication in the context of the
workplace, or +training+ in organizational communication skills. At
the moment, I envision a program of teaching that would provide them
various perspectives that they could chose to practice variously in
their communicatings of the organization (organizational identity and
identification), within it (networking, team-functioning, emailing,
reporting), and to our customers (serving) and the world (marketing),
or a training program that bears the "cons(train)ts" inherent in
skills training, but might be easier to deliver, possibly with more
predictable outcomes.
Martine Devos noted in her posting on this topic,
"Training: to be prepared against surprise"
"Learning: to be prepared for surprise"
Presently, I think that a program designed to teach would provide a
better learning experience, and prepare learners to practice in less
constrained ways, promoting greater creativity. but it might be harder
for me to deliver.
Kathy Smith
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