Teaching vs. Training

The title for this class inclues both teaching and training, but I find it easy to interchange those two words, and have done often times in this class. I've also heard the terms used interchangeably in discussions with others. So it was interesting to work on an assignment with my classmates to determine what ways teaching and training are the same and how they differ.

In our assignment we created a document that listed the different concepts, philosophies, etc. of teaching and training and looking at how they overlapped. After our discussion and a few hours working on the document, we came to the conclusion that they are both similar in the sense that they convey information and have a focus on students and but are often different in methods. Our evaluation of this led us to realize that "The drawbacks of each are that they tend to exclude the other. Combining teaching and training makes for the most effective experience."

In my classroom I can see how this plays out. Traditional teaching involves lecture, verbally conveying the information to my students. That alone isn't very good for student retention or understanding, at least in my experience and based on what we have learned in this class. On the other hand, just having my students do exercises without giving them a content basis - training them without a foundation - can also present problems. I find that mini-lectures combined with active learning exercises effectively balances the teaching and training to make sure my students have a good grasp of basic concepts and how they play out in their interactions.