Perhaps you have designed or attended a training course on how to use a new piece of software. It is likely that the first part of the course was designed to explain why using the software is helpful to the learner; then the course described a procedure, such as entering information. Next, the learner saw a demonstration of how to enter information, then was given a chance to practice on his or her own. Then the course summarized the procedure for the learner, and the learner took a self-test to assess whether or not he or she could really perform the task.

Change the subject, and you still have the same structure for a training course. That’s the way all training courses are designed. Right? Not really. First, there are a large variety of approaches to designing training courses. But more fundamentally, the approach just described makes a number of assump- tions about what learning is, the roles that students and instructors play in a course, the way to best teach the content and, most fundamentally, what education really is. Different approaches embody different thoughts. The structured approach just described, and frequently used in technical training, differs substantially from one in which learners are thrown right into a situation and have to figure out the concepts on their own. An example of this is Anesoft’s Bioterrorism Simulator, which helps physicians, nurses, and other health care providers improve their response to biological and chemical attacks. Learners are asked to treat “simulated patients” and, in the process, must make a diagnosis and administer the most appropriate treatment.

To help learners as they encounter this simulation, the course provides an online help system. In addition, an automated record-keeping system provides a detailed chart for the case.  Both strategies are appropriate for presenting the content, but the content is being presented for very different reasons, and the organizations sponsoring the learning do so for different societal goals.

These differences in reasons for teaching and the societal goals for providing education are the fundamental issues underlying an educational philosophy. Aphilosophy is a set of beliefs regarding the purpose of education. It delineates these beliefs or rationale for why society wants to educate people. In most academic institutions, the philosophy is explicitly stated. In fact, most professors are expected to state their philosophy of education in their teaching portfolios. In contrast, most business organizations do not explicitly state their philosophies of education. Most probably haven’t even thought about it formally, but they have one all the same. This unstated philosophy unconsciously guides most choices regarding training, from the preferred method of teaching to the outcomes expected and the bottom-line benefit to the organization (or even that a tangible bottom-line benefit (usually financial) should be expected). Although the philosophy can be seen in the choice of teaching techniques, these techniques represent only a manifestation of a philosophy, not the philosophy itself. Understanding these philosophies is important because they underlie decisions about who gets educated, what kind of learning experiences the sponsors will pay for, on whose time learning should occur, who is qualified to teach, how sponsors measure results, and dozens of similar issues.

A second reason for taking the time to understand the basics of educational philosophy and learning theory is that understanding them helps you design effective learning programs. Once you understand the range of goals that an educational program should fulfill, you can consider which philosophy or philosophies best match the goals of your program, reflect on the roles for learners and facilitators, and then choose strategies associated with each.