Overview of Teaching and Learning

Over the years there have been arguments as to whether there is any clear distinction between teaching and learning. Many are of the view that teaching cannot take place without learners and vice versa, making the two concepts of teaching and learning joint or running parallel, hence, the two concepts look the same as it may seem by virtue of the argument started in this build up. In the light of the argument that has opened up in this chapter, Stanton (1977) considered the works of various philosophers of education who had sought to define teaching but ended up embarking on a fruitless journey. The result was thus, addressing the relationship between ‘teaching’ and ‘learning’ through what they termed achievement distinction.

Stanton (1977) went further to look at an analogy between teaching and learning made by Kilpatrick in 1925 which resulted in affirming early assertions that teaching implied learning. The reason for this assertion goes back to the belief that a teacher cannot operate in a vacuum, that is to say that teaching and learning must take place concurrently, which in turn means teaching and learning are the same. To confirm his assertion that teaching is equated to learning, Kilpatrick (1925) equates the teacher to a salesman, the learner to a customer, and the art of teaching to selling, thereby painting a picture of how selling cannot take place without the two parties involved. He is quoted below on his view of the matter at stake that:

The salesman hasn’t sold unless the customer buys. The teacher hasn’t taught unless the child learns. I believe in the proportion: teaching: learning = selling: buying. (p.35)

A sharp rebuttal to Kilpatrick’s assertion on teaching and learning was thrown by Smith in 1960 that the central point of the assertion made earlier in 1925 by Kilpatrik cannot hold. He supports his claim on the basis that:

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There is a sense in which it would not be contradictory to say “I am selling X but no one is buying it.” For example, “I have been selling cars all day but nobody bought one” is not self-contradictory. But in this case it would be more precise to say “I have been doing things intended to result in the sale of cars.” (Smith, 1960, footnote No. 5).

In view of what has been established above, Macmillan and McClellan (1967:137) tackle the issue by looking at the goals of teaching activities. They come out with what they termed non-learning objectives (NLO), which states that “…objectives which signal their presence by such locutions as ‘understand’, ‘grasp’, ‘comprehend’, ‘appreciate’ and (perhaps) others.” The locus of their assertion is that teaching is not always directed as learning.

In agreement to Macmillan and McClellan’s (1967) assertion, some teachers have a wrong notion about teaching and learning, for which reason they feel that once they give their best in their teaching venture, learners are also expected to learn at the same rate that teaching takes place. It is for this reason that Stanton (1925:24) quoted Dewey that “But perhaps there are teachers who think that they have done a good day’s teaching irrespective of what pupils have learnt.” This assertion by Dewey opens up the fact that there is definitely a difference between teaching and learning, although one leads to the other or one cannot happen without the other.

To support the view that teaching and learning go hand-in-hand but are not the same, Dessus et al. (2008) opine that teaching and learning are activities that are casually tightly bound together. They further state that the closeness between the two concepts makes is such that when one questions what learning is, it might lead to having a closer look of what the precise components of teaching are. To add the first question may even lead to finding out the underlying principles guiding teaching and the subsequent causes of effective teaching. Atherton (2011) also adds a voice to Dessus et al’s assertion by pointing out that what is taught is not the same as what the students learn.

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It is however reiterated that a number of implications are found in the teaching-learning enterprise. The figure below gives a clearer picture of Artherton’s assertion.

Figure 2.1: What is learned and what is taught

Source: Atherton, (2011) Learning and Teaching; What is learning?

In the figure above, Artherton (2011) explains that:

It is clear that some of what we teach is wasted effort: but the diagram is a representation of only one learner’s learning. It may be that within a class as a whole, everything we teach is learned, by someone. The shape representing the teaching is smaller than that for learning, because students are also learning from other sources, including colleagues and the sheer experience of being in the educational system, as well as more conventional other resources such as books.

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If this diagram and explanation by Artheton is anything to go by, then one cannot but agree that truly, teaching and learning cannot be the same, though, teaching leads to learning; learning does not result from teaching and again, there are other ways of learning [acquire knowledge that results in a relatively permanent change] without being taught. It is in this vain that Frick (1961) looks at learning from the spectacles of a psychologist. He first looks at learning as a process of conditioning and secondly as an individual’s personal discovery of meaning. The essence is that learning can take place whether or not there is teaching.

In order to further clarify what has been said by earlier researchers and educational philosophers, this study presently takes a dip into what has been said about learning, while the concept of teaching is tackled in the next section. First of all, MacMillan and McClellan (1967:136) define learning as “…translate ‘learn’ into ‘getting… to learn’. The definition given here indicates that teaching and learning are not the same per se, rather, the action of teaching leads to learning supposedly. However, that is not always the case as some teaching may not result in learning.

In the words of Atkinson et al (1993), learning is defined as "a relatively permanent change in behaviour that results from practise." This definition clarifies the contention that teaching and learning are the same. Of course, the fact that learning must result in a [permanent] change is reiterated but it can be deduced from the definition that learning does not necessarily come about as a result of teaching. It is not being disputed that teaching engineers learning, however, the issue at stake is that learning can take place by virtue of the learner’s own experience or it can even be accidental. It is in furtherance of this definition that Birkenholz (1999) established that “learning is often defined as a change in behavior which is demonstrated by people implementing knowledge, skills, or practices derived from education.”

He continues to that:

Basically, from an educator’s perspective, learning involves helping people along the learning process, and learning includes all of the things that we do to make it happen.

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As an end result, we know that learning occurs when people take newfound information and incorporate it into their life. For example, if we are working with an audience that lacks basic financial management skills for budgeting, one of our objectives is to see people gain knowledge in this area and to actually implement the new skills – hopefully, over a long period of time.

The picture has become clearer with the explanation by Atkinson et al above. It can be rightly deduced that in the learning process, some help (teaching) may be needed as they start with the explanation. However, cognizance should be taken on the issue that the learner has to identify the new found knowledge, embrace it and make use of it so as to see the permanent change that learning [not teaching] is supposed to bring into the life of everyone who is expected to have learned something. In the nutshell, teaching and learning are closely linked but are not the same. As a matter of fact, teaching is supposed to result in learning, but it is not always the case and even if it does, there are other ways through which learners can learn without being taught by any teacher.