LEARNING TO LEARN
To be fair to the BBC , the piece probably went on to explore these issues in a much more nuanced way , but I only remember the “ photocopier ” phrase , and I have since heard and read people discussing education in similar terms , so it is a good place to start .
The gap between knowledge and skills : How to improve students ’ ‘ techniques ’
Chris Taylor , Head of Classics
Many years ago , at the very beginning of my teaching career , I was listening to a news segment on BBC radio , the main thrust of which was lamenting the poor skillset of school leavers and graduates in the UK . The thesis of the report was that schools and universities tended to fill students with useless knowledge and leave them unprepared for the world of employment . One particularly memorable interviewee complained that a recent employee of his ( presumably one with an English degree ) “ knew a lot about Jane Austen but couldn ’ t use a photocopier .” At the time , with no teaching experience and a swiftly growing worry that I couldn ’ t use a photocopier and thus might be completely unemployable , I took his point as unquestioned truth . But looking back now , the statement , at best , reveals a number of common misunderstandings about what the differences between skills , techniques and knowledge are , and how they interact .
What is a skill ?
Most people share an instinctive understanding of the semantic difference between a skill and a piece of knowledge – a skill is the ability to do something , whereas knowledge is simply the awareness of a fact or piece of information , something which could be held and transmitted by a simple statement written on a piece of paper . However , difficulties arise when applying examples to these definitions . I would suggest that being able to use one particular photocopier is a series of pieces of knowledge – learning a list of what each button does would not be significantly different to learning the capitals of Europe . On the other hand , ( a ) the ability to quickly learn and remember how to use a particular photocopier , ( b ) the ability to transfer the knowledge of how to use one kind of photocopier and apply it successfully to a different one , ( c ) the ability to assess how a photocopier ’ s functions and design could be improved – these are all skills involving cognition , synthesis and evaluation . And it is these that we in education are in the business of fostering . A school syllabus involving learning how to use a series of photocopiers ( quite apart from surely being unfeasibly tedious ) would no doubt please Mr Employer on the radio , but would be very limiting for the student and would be far more knowledge-based than it might appear . Moreover , it would likely instil knowledge that was far more useless than knowledge of Jane Austen , at least partly because the photocopier which a student had learned to use would probably not exist a decade later when they are in the workplace . Far better to teach problem-solving and metacognition skills so that a future employee will be able to undertake successfully the widest range possible of ( as yet unknown ) tasks which they will be required to complete in their career ; this is what a rich and well-planned curriculum will do for its students .
Knowledge v Skills – a false debate
Knowledge and skills tend to be seen as two wholly separate ways of designing a curriculum , and are often , unhelpfully , anchored to political ideologies . A knowledge-based curriculum is often seen as traditional and rigorous ; Nick Gibb , the then Schools Minister in a speech in 2017 described the Labour national curriculum as “ stripped of knowledge content in favour of skills ” and called the idea that teachers need not focus on knowledge and instead turn their attention to developing creativity or communication skills “ a romantic notion ” ( Gibb , 2017 ). Those who favour
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