Reflecting on my role as a teacher, I find myself confronting and having to situate myself in relationship to the terms learning and teaching, pedagogy and education.

The one that I like the best and feel most clear about using is learning. What is meant by teaching is more mysterious and more open for discussion. I simply use that term to describe the act of giving a class, if not necessarily what I find myself doing in a class. Education suggests to me a system or framework in which learning can happen and as such is quite neutral. The term pedagogy I feel an instinctive aversion towards since it speaks to me of abstraction and the need for aggrandisement.

After taking stock initially of these gut reactions, I have found subsequent etymological analysis of the terms to have helped to clarify my relationship to them.

To learn, according to the New Oxford American Dictionary (2005) is defined as, “to gain or acquire knowledge of skill in (something) by study, experience, or being taught”. It has its origins in the Old English leornian which interestingly in Middle English also means to teach. It is still sometimes used in that way, although considered a mark of unsophistication, as in, “can you learn me how to ride a bike”. In my experience, young children sometimes use this form which is suggestive to me of the primacy of learning over teaching.

Learn is of West Germanic origin and is related to the German word lernen and also to lore, as in folklore, which is defined as, “a body of traditions and knowledge on a subject or held by a particular group, typically passed from person to person by word of mouth”. To me, this connection between learn and lore evokes the experiential aspect of learning as an embodied or somatic act in that it speaks of a “body of… knowledge” and the direct transmission of that knowledge as happening “person to person”. It also leaves open how the knowledge is to be “passed”.

The neurological basis for learning is the formation of new synaptic connections between neurons. It follows that ultimately any act of learning happens inside of and is governed by the individual who learns and cannot be otherwise. So, when we come to examine what it is to teach, we need to be circumspect. 

To teach is defined variously as: “to show or explain to someone how to do something, to give information about or instruction in a subject or skill; to encourage someone to accept something as a fact or principle; to cause (someone) to learn or understand something; induce someone by example or punishment to do or not to do something.” The part of the definition that most clearly matches what I feel myself to be attempting to do while teaching is, “to cause (someone) to learn or understand something”. That begs the question, how to cause someone to learn something? 

The word teach is of Germanic origin and derives from the Old English tæcan meaning to show, present or point out, and is related to the word token, “a thing serving as a visible or tangible representation of something abstract”. To teach is always an indirect process since it is the learner who does the learning. The best a teacher can do is to point towards what they wish to teach, to give a representation of it. To return to the neurological model, we can go further by saying that it is through having an experience that learning occurs. The act of teaching then could said to be the act of setting up an experience from which someone could learn something, or creating the conditions for learning to happen.

Education is defined as, “the process of receiving or giving systematic instruction”, and has its roots in the word educe meaning to “bring out or develop” from Latin educere “lead out”. Education evokes for me an act of supporting learning on an ongoing basis. In this respect, I have experienced two formal somatic educations. At the SNDO as guest student, which placed me on the margins of an already unconventional education, and the Feldenkrais Method professional training. I also consider my ongoing study through choosing to take workshops with teachers who attracted me as a form of self-education. 

Pedagogy is defined as, “the method and practice of teaching, especially as an academic subject or theoretical concept”, and derives via French pédagogie from the Greek paidagõgia meaning “the office of a pedagogue”. A pedagogue is defined as, “a teacher, especially a strict or pedantic one”. Pedantic is the adjectival form of pedant: “a person who is excessively concerned with minor details and rules or with displaying academic learning.”

Until now, the concept of pedagogy has been the furthest removed from my experience as a learner and teacher of movement. My instinctive negative reaction to the term springs from my prejudice against academia. In the words of Alan Watts : “A person who thinks all the time has nothing to think about except thoughts. He (sic) looses touch with reality and lives in a world of illusions.”

In its more positive and neutral sense of a, “method and practice of teaching”, I see that a pedagogy emerges from practice.