The call for this special issue defined education as a systematic process of instruction and further specified learning as the action of creating, modifying or reinforcing existing knowledge to create new understanding. Here, we think of the process similarly, but framed by a slightly different paradigm. Drawing on the work of educational anti-consumerists such as David F. Noble (2002) as well as design theory (Cross, 2006; Dorst, 2011; Farrell & Hooker, 2013) and adaptive leadership (Heifetz, Grashow, & Linsky, 2009) we frame the complex interactions involving teaching and learning along a spectrum bracketed by training on one side andeducation on the other. Training is a process which generates objective knowledge in order to make a person functional within someone else’s system or industry (Noble, 2002, 2013). In other words there is no direct connection to the self or personal development. In contrast,education, at its best, is total integration of one’s self with the knowledge they absorb and eventually synthesize for their own self-learning (Noble, 2002). When choosing between training and education we, as a nation, have often chosen the former in the name of workforce development and economic progress, but at what cost?
Designing alternatives: Design thinking as a mediating learning strategy to bridge science and the humanities for leadership learning