[tdekken]

Thanks so much for your response @sirspacey!

> Framing education as lessons presumes that lessons are how people learn

To clarify, are you thinking of a lecture instead of a lesson? A lecture is "a speech read or delivered before an audience or class, especially for instruction or to set forth some subject" whereas a lesson is "a section into which a course of study is divided".

A lesson is a generic term agnostic to instructional style (e.g., explicit, discovery, project-based, etc.) Similar to how everything in software engineering is a "task" :).

[sirspacey]

Appreciate the follow up!

I do mean lesson. In this case I’m critiquing the idea that learning is a set of tasks.

Of course, we can apply lesson generically to any form of instruction, but I do think it’s meaningful to consider things like learning by hanging out, learning by imitation & experimentation, without a preconceived idea of what is being taught or in what order.

As an example, I’m a huge fan of unit-based studies, which explicitly enable a more free roaming, multi-disciplinary approach to learning with the topic as a jumping off point. The curiosity of the student drives the teacher’s response.

Lessons are of course useful. My observation is that we see lessons as the learning path, but I’ve seen students learn multiple things simultaneously without a designed path.

Another example here is instruction where students invent their own lessons. The tasks are subservient to the student’s learning journey instead of the arbiters of it.