Dick Allwright,Lancaster,July, 1997.

Lancaster.July, 1997

For The Last Time: Am I Now, Have I Ever Been,And Could I Ever Be - a ‘Developer’?

1. AN INTRODUCTION, TO YET ANOTHER ATTEMPT AT SATISFACTORY, EVEN

CONVINCING, DEFINITIONS

The question posed by my title reflects the positively accusatory tone of the 1950s American

McCarthyite original: “Are you now, or have you ever been, a communist?”. This may seem an

extreme point of comparison to choose for a paper purporting to be about language teaching, but

it does seem that people in our field daring to call themselves ‘developers’, as opposed to

‘teachers’, or ‘trainers’, are asking for trouble, because they are assumed to be claiming to be

able to do something that everyone else around would think thoroughly misguided and

misconceived - to be able to developother people. This censorious attitude is derived from the

position thatdevelopment, as opposed especially totraining, is something that you can only do

for and to yourself. Nobody, the argument runs, can do it to you, can develop you, whereas

training, virtually by definition, is something that is essentially done to other people. I believe

this claim about the nature of development is fundamentally true, but only insofar as all learning

can only be done, ultimately, by the learner. The argument cannot therefore serve usefully to

distinguish developmentfrom any other sort of learning. To attempt to make that sort of

distinction requires, unfortunately, yet another look at the much visited problem of the definition

of terms in this area (for a helpful discussion see Woodward, 1991: 139-162). This is what, with

some trepidation as a relative newcomer to this particular minefield, I now propose to do.

Because I believe that learning itself is at the heart of the distinctions we need I will take as my

starting points five descriptive propositions about the notion of learning. These will, I hope,

provide the necessary conceptual background for three practical definitions oftraining,

educationand developmentthat may serve perhaps to facilitate future discussions about the

similarities and differences between them. I will conclude with oneprescriptive proposition

abouttraining, education,anddevelopmentprogrammes, using this proposition to return finally

to the question in my title.

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2. FIVE DESCRIPTIVE PROPOSITIONS ABOUT LEARNING

2.1 Learning can aim at the acquisition of technical competence, and/or of information,

and/or of understanding.

Here I am simply finding my own terms for the standard distinctions in the field, and could

perhaps have used the more colloquial ‘knowing how’, ‘knowing that’, and ‘knowing why’. I

suggest that we need at least these three types of knowing to enable us to make satisfactory and

useful distinctions betweentraining, education, anddevelopment.

2.2 Learning, of any sort, can only bedoneby the learner.

I would like to take this claim for granted, as a commonplace in our field. Whatever we think

about whether or not we can ‘teach’ someone something, probably none of us would argue that

we can sensibly learn itfor them, at least not in the usual sense of the term. That is something

that they have, necessarily, to do for themselves.

2.3 Learning, of any sort, can nevertheless befacilitated by learning management activities.

Here I am proposing a crucial distinction betweendoing learning, which I have already claimed

can only be done by learners themselves, andmanaging learning, which can also be done by

others. Bymanaging learning I mean to refer to all those things that can be done to make it

more likely that learning itself will also get done. Strictly speaking, however, managing learning

is neither necessary nor sufficient to learning itself. For example, sometimes we organise

ourselves to ask a question whose answer is reasonably important to us (asking the way in the

street, say) and seconds later we have no idea of what we were told, so managing learning is not

necessarily sufficient to guarantee that learning will take place. And we can easily find

examples of highly effective learning that does not seem to have been managed in any obvious

way, so management cannot be strictly necessary, either. For example, we get to know other

people’s faces without usually ever making even so much as a mental note for ourselves about

what they look like. And yet we also know that, if we wish to take the trouble, we can make it

more likely that we will remember people’s faces by making mental notes about them, or even

by studying their photographs, so learning management activities can sometimes be facilitative.

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2.4 Learning management activities can be provided by others as well as by learners

themselves.

The distinction between doing learning and managing learning is crucial for my purposes here

precisely because it entails that it is only in themanagementof learning that there is a potential

role for other people. This calls to mind the claim reported in my introduction that development,

by definition, is something no-one can do for you, something you can only do for yourself. But

my own claim, in section 2.3 above, is precisely thatall types of learning can in principle be

facilitated by the learning management activities of others. I cannot therefore use this potential

role of other people as a criterial feature for my own notion ofdevelopment.

2.5 Learning management activities provided by others may be provided on their terms, or

on terms set by the learners themselves, or on terms negotiated between them and the

providers.

If I go to a college and register for a course of instruction, say in motorcycle maintenance, or

French for beginners, then it is most likely that the course will be provided strictly on the

providers’ terms. I am not likely to have any say in when the class meets, let alone how much

time it occupies per week, or how many fellow students I will have to learn to get along with.

All these are general aspects of learning management that I would expect to leave to the

institution to determine. I would probably also expect the instructor to have already decided

precisely what the course was going to try to cover, and what method would be adopted to help

me learn all the material covered. But whether I consider myself engaged in training, education,

or development does not depend on the issue ofon whose termsI attend the classes.

To take a different example, if I decide to upgrade my word-processing skills, I may find it more

convenient to buy a manual and sort things out for myself. Some people seem even to prefer

learning such things by trial and error. But, even if I use a manual, I do not need to let it take

over all my learning management decisions. I can still decide for myself which bits of the

manual I consult, and can ignore it completely if I wish. But the simple fact that I choose to

make use of the manual entirely on my own terms does not mean that my acquisition of

enhanced technical competence in word-processing is reallydevelopment, rather than training.

The third possibility in my proposition is one of negotiation between learners and providers.

Some elementary schools, for example, offer a setting in which very young learners get to

choose the area of the room they will work in (number, language, or arts and crafts, typically),

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and so they get to decide on the materials, and the fellow learners, they will work with, subject

only to occasional negotiations with the teacher to ensure that in any one week, say, they will

have spent a reasonable proportion of their time in each of the three areas.

Discussions of the distinctions to be made betweentraining, education,anddevelopmentdo not

usually deal at length with the notion of who determines the terms on which such things happen,

but seem to take it for granted that training, for example, is something imposed on people, and

provided exclusively on the providers’ terms, and that this is therefore something that criterially

distinguishes training from other phenomena. It seems clear to me, however, given the above

examples, that the issue ofon whose termstraining, education, or development are available

cannot beconceptuallycriterial. We do need this consideration but only when we are not

thinking primarily of the underlying conceptual distinctions we need to make, but of the practical

use we want to make of labels in the ‘real-world’ of language teaching.

3. THREE PRACTICAL DEFINITIONS TO FACILITATE DISCUSSION OF

TRAINING, EDUCATION, AND DEVELOPMENT

If I were to restrict myself to purely conceptual and criterial terms, I would now be reduced to

proposing (having already argued myself out of making criterial use of any other considerations)

that training is best defined as aiming attechnical competence, while educationanddevelopment

are best defined as aiming atinformation and understanding,respectively (assuming the

meaning of those terms set out in 2.1above). But such purely conceptual definitions, I have

already noted, are not of much use for the description and labelling of events in the necessary

messiness of the ‘real world’ of language teaching. My hope is that the following definitions

will appeal to the reader because they arepractical definitions, not conceptually watertight but

practically useful. They therefore set out thetypical attributes of the three phenomena, not what

might be theconceptually criterialones for the underlying concepts.

3.1 Typically, but not criterially, learning management activities intended primarily to

facilitate the acquisition of technical competenceare provided by others on their terms.

This is what we typically call TRAINING.

This definition recognises that what we calltraining is usually a matter of ‘trainees’ being put in

the hands of ‘trainers’, whose aim is to enable the ‘trainees’ to acquire technical competence,

and who make all of the important decisions about the training process itself. The definition

does not rule out the possible inclusion of other elements, such as the provision ofinformation

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about the technical competence to be acquired, or discussion ofwhy it makes sense to be

technically competent in this particular way. It just specifies the primary focus of a training

programme. This definition aims to capture the essence of what people mean when they talk, for

example, about a pre-service course for language teachers being atraining course.

3.2 Typically, but not criterially, learning management activities intended primarily to

facilitate the acquisition of information are also provided on the providers’ terms, but with

greater scope for self-management on the part of the learner(s). This is what we typically

call EDUCATION.

This definition recognises theinformation focus of education, as we commonly think of it, but

specifically includes the possibility of the scope for self-management being somewhat greater

than in a training context. For example, if I enrol in an evening course of lectures and

discussions on Shakespeare’s plays then there is at least some chance that I will be able to decide

for myself which of the plays dealt with on the course I make the greatest effort to learn about. I

will probably prepare myself more thoroughly for the sessions that deal with those particular

plays, for example, and be more willing to take part in class discussions about them.

In a similar way, a master’s course in applied linguistics, as a form of higher education, offers

scope for selective attention on a grand scale, and ‘selective attention’ is in a sense just another

way of talking about the management of learning.

As for training, this definition does not rule out the acquisition of technical competence, and/or

of understanding, as elements in an education programme, it only prioritises information.

3.3 Typically, but not criterially, learning management activities intended primarily to

facilitate the acquisition of understandingare provided by, or on the (normally negotiable)

terms of, the people who wish to enhance their understanding. This is what we typically

call DEVELOPMENT.

This definition again sets out the typical situation to which we are willing to apply a term, in this

case ‘development’. We seem typically to have in mind people, or groups of people, who have

decided that they want to ‘develop’(to enhance their understanding of language teaching,

perhaps) and who set out to find ways of doing so, on their own terms, with or without help from

‘experts’. But this does not mean that their development cannot have an element oftraining in

it, or of education, given that understanding is likely to benefit from the acquisition of the

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relevant information, and in any case is unlikely to be of much practical value unless it is

accompanied by the acquisition of the appropriate technical competences.

4. ONE PRESCRIPTIVE PROPOSITION ABOUT PROGRAMMES.

The above discussions all lead me to the conclusion set out in subsection 4.1 below. This

conclusion recognises that if we try to arrive at definitions by distinguishing betweentraining,

education,anddevelopmentsolely in terms of the types of learning involved, or in terms of the

potential role of other people in their management, or in terms of the issue ofon whose terms

they are available, then our definitions are going to be too narrow to be practically useful. We

need surely to think in terms of putting things together, not of keeping them strictly apart.

4.1 Training, education, and development programmes, to be practically worthwhile, must

each provide for the facilitation of at leasttwo of the three notions oftechnical competence,

information, and understanding, one of which must beunderstanding.

The practical definitions set out in section 3 all left room for the possibility of including

elements from each other. I would now like to go further and propose that, in practice, theyneed

to draw on each other. For example, atraining course, in the real world, will not be complete,

will not offer all it needs to offer, as atraining course, unless it offers help with more than one

way of knowing, unless, say, it provides for developing some level of understanding. But this

provision for development can be provided on the providers’ terms, without endangering its

status as developmental work. And people engaged indevelopmentwill not probably get all they

could out of it, in practical terms, unless they also acquire the necessary technical competence to

do something useful with their enhanced understanding. But seeking the appropriate technical

competence to make practical use of enhanced understanding does not need to be seen as

threatening the essentially developmental nature of the overall enterprise.

5. SO, AM I NOW, HAVE I EVER BEEN, AND COULD I EVER BE - A

‘DEVELOPER’?

To this charge I would now make the plea that was common among defendants in the anti-

nuclear movement in Britain in the 1960s, whenever they were taken to court for, say,

‘obstructing the highway’ by a sit-down protest in the road outside a base for nuclear bombers -

‘technically guilty but morally innocent’. I would in fact like to think that I have been able,

sometimes, to facilitate other people’s development as language teachers, just as countless other

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people have facilitated mine as an applied linguist. I would not like to think that my, or their,

capacity for self-development has thereby been inhibited in any way.

Finally, I would like to think that by highlighting the distinction between conceptual definitions

and practical ones, I may have helped to end fruitless debates about the ‘proper’use of the terms

training, educationanddevelopment.I would not wish, however, to be thought to be trying to

inhibit discussion of the conceptual and professional issues involved in clarifying the phenomena

themselves. There is still endless scope for productive debate on those.

Dick Allwright

REFERENCE

Woodward, T. 1991Models and Metaphors in Language Teacher Training. Cambridge,Cambridge University Press.