'Delivering Teaching' - what does that mean?

Those who work with me will know that I have a dislike of the word ‘delivery’ being used to describe education. In the medical world many clinicians talk about ‘delivering lectures,’  or ‘delivering teaching.’ I hear this as a transactional description of the educational process which implies a commodity based concept of learning, whereby the teacher (the expert) gives, bestows upon or hands over the knowledge, skills or even attitudes to be taken up by the learner. Freire (1972) called this the ‘banking method’ and wrote extensively about the damage such a view of education can cause.

Notice, while I am on the subject, the number of times the word ‘teaching’ is used when learning is what is meant. Junior doctors leave the clinical setting of the ward or theatre to attend ‘teaching’ but it is not they who are doing this teaching. People say, “I was at some teaching the other day..” when they were there to learn.  What is it about the distinction between the two words that causes discomfort to me and confusion to others?

Some languages have the same word for ‘teaching’ and ‘learning’ and some of those languages differentiate between the two by the use of the passive or the active voice – teaching being the active part of the verb (as though learning is not active!)

I have looked at the etymology of some of the words used to explain the actions of those who are engaged in the learning process. To ‘deliver’ means to bring, hand over, provide, or to surrender something. It comes from the Latin ‘de’ meaning away and ‘librere’ to set free. So to deliver teaching is to bring along something that is handed over, or surrendered to the learners, which in my interpretation means that it is then relinquished by the teacher who can walk away from the process, responsibility discharged. Where, I ask, is the reflexivity in that? What role does the interrelationships between teacher and learner, teacher and material and learner and material play? Very little it would seem.

So would ‘provide’ be a better word?  ‘Provide’ means to make available for use, to supply, to make adequate preparation for or to allow or cater for, to present or to yield. It comes form the Latin ‘providere’ meaning to foresee or to attend to; ‘pro’ meaning before and ‘videre’ meaning to see. So to provide means to preview.  Is this what happens in education? Maybe. But do we provide teaching or learning?

I tend to use the words ‘facilitate learning’ to explain what I hope will result through the organised activities I set up. To facilitate comes from the French ‘faciliter,’ meaning to make easy. I am not sure that the learners I work with would all agree that I make things easy for them, but it is certainly my intention when preparing for the educational episodes in which I will be involved. Facilitate also refers to smoothing the way, to helping to cause something and that is what I hope that my educational endeavours result in; the causation of something new, be that understanding or practice.

So next time you use the words ‘delivery’ or ‘teaching’ just stop and think what kind of message you wish to convey about the education you propose. 

Freire, P., (1972) Pedagogy of the Oppressed  London: Penguin