Last week I read a post from JD Dillon on “Why we should stop using the term “learner” when we refer to those folks we serve through our Learning & Development (L&D) initiatives.  JD’s position on the topic clearly reflects why learning in the workplace is the best industry to be in from a vendor perspective.  Every three to five years the industry gets a new influx of fancy, flashy and catchy terms to monetize on i.e. learning, talent, gamification, micro learning, blended, etc. Therefore, seeing JD’s propositions on why we should stop using the term “learner” has “tickled” my critical thinking nerve.  In this post, I ponder on JD’s five reasons to stop using the term and provide you with a rationale on why we shouldn’t stop using the term.  I also explain what we would need to change to stop using “learner” to label those we serve in L&D.

The L&D Oxymoron

If our function in workplace learning is called “Learning & Development” or L&D; then doesn’t that cause an oxymoronic state between what we do and those we serve? It’s truly all about context isn’t it?  Why do we call it Learning and Development?  We can’t deliver learning, we can only facilitate it.  When your function is Customer Service, you serve “customers” and you deliver service.  When L&D was called “Training & Development” or T&D, we served “trainees”.  However, if we do a comparison, “learner” and “trainee” carry a different connotation depending on how they are used.  For example; a “learner” is someone engaged in the knowledge of new skills while a “trainee” is someone being trained to do a job.  Below, we see the Merriam Webster definitions for both:

Learner

 If you notice, a learner becomes “learned” by reflection, gaining skills, ability, knowledge and realization.  Conversely, a trainee gets “trained”.  Trainee also has the emotional connotation of have little to no skills which may affect the learning process.  Therefore, unless we clearly define what we do i.e. learning, training or talent development, those we serve should remain as “learners”.  Now, let’s take a look a JD’s reasons to stop using the word learner.

Reason #1: “Learner” isn’t used outside L&D…

It’s true! Your business partners or internal customers don’t really care about L&D jargon.  Just as well your CEO may not care about IT jargon.  Therefore, we should not use “learner” in talks outside the L&D department.  However, the same occurs with any other jargon i.e. learning objectives, Level 2 evaluation, Bloom’s taxonomy and even (believe it or not) “business needs” may cause a few “deer in the headlights” looks from your business counterparts.  It’s perfectly fine to refer to those that are going to be trained as “employees” or whatever the cultural flavor is in your organization.  Internally though, L&D staff should always consider them as learners.

Reason #2: “Learner” signals ownership…

For this reason JD wrote: “Whenever I hear someone say “our learners,” it sounds like we are expressing ownership over the person – as if they are under our control while they are engaged with L&D resources.” My contention about this statement is that we already start with a biased approached.  As humans we tend to establish communities and belonging is a natural behavior.  Rather than seeing “ownership”, we should see “connection” in the context of caring for learners, not owning them.  For example; what would be seen as more caring? A CEO referring to the workforce as “our employees” or “the employees”?  From an emotional intelligence context we should continue the use of “learner”.

Reason #3: “Learner” implies they are learning…

JD stated: “This point is similar to those poorly crafted objectives that start with “In this course, you will learn …” No, they won’t necessarily learn anything.” That’s true and sadly, many organizations don’t even have learning objectives as part of their training design.  However, I would argue that regardless of the effectiveness of the curriculum “learning” still occurs;  it’s just not the desired outcome in most cases.  If we look at the “learner” as someone who’s an adult and knows why he\she is there to learn; then we can accept them as learners.  However, we all learn every day at both the conscious and the subconscious levels.  A bad training experience, makes you at least “learn” what others in your company know or that your time has been wasted.

Reason #4: “Learner” is yet another label…

I completely agree on this one with JD.  “Learner” is just a label and therefore not important on how we facilitate learning.  However, “learner” is better than “student” as it differentiates workplace from academic settings.  It’s better than “participant” because just “being there” does not mean you are participating.  It’s better than “trainee” because it does not assume what your proficiency level is as a learner.  Therefore, it’s a label but, society works that way.  We need categories, organization and prioritization in most of what we do.

Reason #5: “Learner” misplaces the focus of our work…

Here’s the big one: “It’s not about learning. It’s about doing. The term “learner” mistakenly puts the focus on the wrong desired outcome of our work.” JD makes a great point in terms of what the desired outcome is for the business: Can employees do their job and do it well?  If your function is “Learning and Development” then it’s about learning how to do the job.  So, maybe the culprit is not what we label “participants”, “users”, “workers”, etc. The key component of all is what is your function as a leader of an organization’s workforce readiness initiatives?  Should we be “W&R” as in “Workforce & Readiness” to do the job?

L&P: A future state…

What if L&D became L&P as in “Learning and Performance”?  Why not? If we think of it, what we do should be focused on nothing else but, business needs.  A business usually needs two things to thrive: Learning what works and outperforming the competition.  Those who work for the business must learn how to do their job and perform.  Well, maybe is not a topic for this post but, the moral of the story is: Until we find our true identity in the organizational scope, we can’t define accurately who we serve and why.

Conclusion

In summary, the notion that Learning and Development (L&D) should not call those who it serves “learners” leaves us with a conflicting oxymoron.  JD brings up some valid contentions on using “learner” inappropriately outside of the L&D circle or assuming that the desired learning outcome will just happen as the result of training.  Some of JD’s viewpoints on what a “learner” is may seem biased and ambiguously contextual.  Finally, thinking deeply about how we refer to those we serve in workplace learning is helpful but, not as important as truly questioning how we deliver upon their business needs.