5 minutes ago, Axis of Bob said:

One of my pet peeves is people complaining about the word 'learnings'.

In a teaching context, a learning is a student-oriented term that refers to the information by its importance to the student, whilst a lesson is a teacher-oriented term that refers to the information based on its delivery. It's a shift in the education from being teacher-oriented to student-oriented, and our language didn't have a good way of making that distinction as it happened. Students are taught a lesson by a teacher but there's no guarantee that this lesson results in learning. The learning comes from the student.

For a coach, the lesson is unimportant in this context. The lesson is a team kicking 8 straight goals against you. The important thing for the players is the learning, which is an improved knowledge on how to make better decisions.

great explanation - all makes sense to me now. Thank you AOB.

11 hours ago, Where Demons Dare said:

Skills weren't great to be honest today. But it's a new game plan and everyone is still figuring each other out with the massive turnover of staff and players this off season. Our composure will improve in the coming weeks. Even Kingy is absorbing a lot as head coach, I expected him to be more demonstrative and loud, barking instructions but he was quite tame.

He’s been in AFL system a week — let’s relax on the kicking assessment

11 hours ago, Where Demons Dare said:

. But that's why we have trainers... to help players develop their technique.

Clarry, Tracc and Viney say hi....

Slightly off but I expect with the new game style there will be lots of overlap run feeding the ball off to the quality kickers. As long as Onley can take a grab and hit a player coming past at speed, he’ll do just fine in transition footy

58 minutes ago, Neil Crompton said:

great explanation - all makes sense to me now. Thank you AOB.

I will add that this isn't anything official etc, just my particular interpretation and how I use it/see it being used. However there is a pretty clear distinction in the use (from my view) between the two terms.

Can I just say that I really appreciate everyone's thinkings on this matter.

1 hour ago, Axis of Bob said:

One of my pet peeves is people complaining about the word 'learnings'.

In a teaching context, a learning is a student-oriented term that refers to the information by its importance to the student, whilst a lesson is a teacher-oriented term that refers to the information based on its delivery. It's a shift in the education from being teacher-oriented to student-oriented, and our language didn't have a good way of making that distinction as it happened. Students are taught a lesson by a teacher but there's no guarantee that this lesson results in learning. The learning comes from the student.

For a coach, the lesson is unimportant in this context. The lesson is a team kicking 8 straight goals against you. The important thing for the players is the learning, which is an improved knowledge on how to make better decisions.

This may be the only rationalisation of the word I've ever seen that makes sense and paints it as a worthy addition (or re-addition) to the lexicon.

I think I, and others, complain about it because the vast, vast, vast majority of people don't use it like this. They use it to to sound smart or part of the in crowd in a corporate meeting room or in a formal document. To them, it's not an important alternative to lesson, it's just a faddish synonym. They are happy to substitute it for "discovery", "finding", "understanding", anything that doesn't have a faddish ring to it.

When I hear someone use it, I would love to instantly think "Ah, that person is interested in what students actually get out of education." Instead I almost always think "That person is either out of their depth or a bit of a [censored]."

26 minutes ago, Rab D Nesbitt said:

Can I just say that I really appreciate everyone's thinkings on this matter.

So long as they can learn 'em to kick gooder when they verse other teams, I'll be happy.

1 hour ago, Axis of Bob said:

One of my pet peeves is people complaining about the word 'learnings'.

In a teaching context, a learning is a student-oriented term that refers to the information by its importance to the student, whilst a lesson is a teacher-oriented term that refers to the information based on its delivery. It's a shift in the education from being teacher-oriented to student-oriented, and our language didn't have a good way of making that distinction as it happened. Students are taught a lesson by a teacher but there's no guarantee that this lesson results in learning. The learning comes from the student.

For a coach, the lesson is unimportant in this context. The lesson is a team kicking 8 straight goals against you. The important thing for the players is the learning, which is an improved knowledge on how to make better decisions.

I'm sorry I brought a peeve to the surface again for you, Bob. 😔

The respective meanings you have outlined actually represent the point I was trying to make. At the time Goodwin referred to them, in post-match pressers, the outcomes of games were 'lessons', not 'learnings'. They were information, from the game, and, in due course, to be (re)delivered by the coaches. Yes, they were prospective learnings, but they had yet to be translated into, as you rightly put it, information of importance (relevance, usefulness, usability) to the players. And, as you say, there is no guarantee 'learning' will be achieved.

So, if a coach wants to use 'learnings' at a post-match presser, it should be framed as 'there were lessons from the game that we hope/intend/expect/etc will become learnings for the players'.

20 minutes ago, The Taciturn Demon said:

When I hear someone use it, I would love to instantly think "Ah, that person is interested in what students actually get out of education." Instead I almost always think "That person is either out of their depth or a bit of a [censored]."

I'm sure that this is the case a lot of the time. I have many, many of these where incorrect usage drives me up the wall. Things like a bouncing football being the 'personification' of luck, or similar idiocy.

I just think that in coaching, which is an education role, the usage change is more reflective of a change in the perspective of the coaches that are doing it. Coaching used to be about yelling and screaming. It was an active role where the coach told players what to do. Now it's more of a focus on the collective and the importances of process, which leaning is certainly part of. I think the language change has happened alongside that because that distinction was important for the modern coaches who popularised the terms - coaches who played under a different coaching philosophy (Goodwin playing under Malcolm Blight, Hardwick under Sheedy, Beveridge under Northey, etc).

Each new generation moves the language slightly to better reflect the cultural changes that have happened in their time. One of the great strengths of English is the variety of borrowed words it has to say the same thing with subtle difference, like calling someone a porker or a swine - they're both technically a pig but have subtle differences. I think this is one of those instances (and very different from those monsters who describe footballers moving laconically!!).

2 minutes ago, Timothy Reddan-A'Blew said:

So, if a coach wants to use 'learnings' at a post-match presser, it should be framed as 'there were lessons from the game that we hope/intend/expect/etc will become learnings for the players'.

You're missing that the coaches are part of the collective receiving the knowledge. They aren't just the teachers anymore, they are students with the players.

Learnings, in this context, could be replaced by 'things to learn'. The game provides many things to learn. The distinction for coaches is that learnings are information whilst lessons are events. Not everyone will draw that distinction because culture has changed over time and that difference would have previously been unimportant, but the new language is about promoting the games to players as opportunities to learn rather than simply final judgements of their worth.

I learn from lessons. I also learn from mistakes, failures, successes, experiences and trial and error.

I'm surprised all this stuff about "learnings" is causing so much trouble.

Thanks @Axis of Bob. @Timothy Reddan-A'Blew signing out.

33 minutes ago, Axis of Bob said:

I'm sure that this is the case a lot of the time. I have many, many of these where incorrect usage drives me up the wall. Things like a bouncing football being the 'personification' of luck, or similar idiocy.

I just think that in coaching, which is an education role, the usage change is more reflective of a change in the perspective of the coaches that are doing it. Coaching used to be about yelling and screaming. It was an active role where the coach told players what to do. Now it's more of a focus on the collective and the importances of process, which leaning is certainly part of. I think the language change has happened alongside that because that distinction was important for the modern coaches who popularised the terms - coaches who played under a different coaching philosophy (Goodwin playing under Malcolm Blight, Hardwick under Sheedy, Beveridge under Northey, etc).

Each new generation moves the language slightly to better reflect the cultural changes that have happened in their time. One of the great strengths of English is the variety of borrowed words it has to say the same thing with subtle difference, like calling someone a porker or a swine - they're both technically a pig but have subtle differences. I think this is one of those instances (and very different from those monsters who describe footballers moving laconically!!).

Super interesting that you're not necessarily coming at this from a hardcore descriptivism viewpoint. I think your point about the word reflecting the times is a really good one.

23 minutes ago, Axis of Bob said:

Learnings, in this context, could be replaced by 'things to learn'

I think this perfectly sums up my wariness over "learnings". With a bit of syntactical fiddling, and maybe a change of verbs, you can still convey what you mean without using "learnings".

Although your explanation definitely has me thinking, I still think in most cases where I read it, there's an alternative that works just as well.

I too often see "Key learnings going forward" replace "What we learned", "What we discovered", "What we found out" in the same way "Our rightsizing journey" might replace "Why 12,000 people just got sacked".

Edited yesterday at 01:381 day by The Taciturn Demon

1 hour ago, Rab D Nesbitt said:

Can I just say that I really appreciate everyone's thinkings on this matter.

My thankings for your thinkings

13 minutes ago, Timothy Reddan-A'Blew said:

Thanks @Axis of Bob. @Timothy Reddan-A'Blew signing out.

Welcome to pre-xmas Demonland! 😁

My apologies for it all getting out of hand, it was just a little thing in the back of my head that I'd typically ignore. A particularly slow work day combined with a particularly slow everything else day somehow made this a conversation worth having. I actually don't have a very strong opinion about it at all, I just enjoyed the discussion. 👍

16 minutes ago, The Taciturn Demon said:

"Our rightsizing journey"

The right size for this phrase is zero.

18 minutes ago, Timothy Reddan-A'Blew said:

Thanks @Axis of Bob. @Timothy Reddan-A'Blew signing out.

Is @'ing yourself the written version of talking in the third person?

Edited yesterday at 01:491 day by Gorgoroth

43 minutes ago, The Taciturn Demon said:

Although your explanation definitely has me thinking, I still think in most cases where I read it, there's an alternative that works just as well.

I'm not a fan of a lot of corporate speak, but I'm also not a fan of the idea that language doesn't rapidly evolve and change. Or that grammar is static and that it is a negative that a lot of modern language breaks old rules of grammar. Go back over 100 years and see how some rules of grammar at the time seem so anachronistic now.

Why would you use "things to learn" when it's three words rather than one ("learnings")? Tim Berners-Lee said one of the worst things about his development of urls was that it takes three times as many syllables to say "www" as it does to say "world wide web".

Some time in the future, maybe even now, no one will even think of complaining that we use "should of" instead of should've". (I correct it now, but I'm probably fighting a losing battle.)

Who would have thought even 20 years ago that we'd have words like femtech, neurodivergent and onboarding. Or that people would shorten phrases to words, like chillax, bae or inspo.

5 minutes ago, mauriesy said:

I'm not a fan of a lot of corporate speak, but I'm also not a fan of the idea that language doesn't rapidly evolve and change. Or that grammar is static and that it is a negative that a lot of modern language breaks old rules of grammar. Go back over 100 years and see how some rules of grammar at the time seem so anachronistic now.

Why would you use "things to learn" when it's three words rather than one ("learnings")? Tim Berners-Lee said one of the worst things about his development of urls was that it takes three times as many syllables to say "www" as it does to say "world wide web".

Some time in the future, maybe even now, no one will even think of complaining that we use "should of" instead of should've". (I correct it now, but I'm probably fighting a losing battle.)

Who would have thought even 20 years ago that we'd have words like femtech, neurodivergent and onboarding. Or that people would shorten phrases to words, like chillax, bae or inspo.

No, completely. And sometimes it changes very radically - and words, for example, don't just shift but become the opposite of what they used to mean. And often the change is completely natural and separate from powerful people shaping language for their own ends.

But - and maybe this demonstrates a paranoia in me, or just an Orwellian cantankerousness - when someone says "learnings" is better than "things to learn" because it's two fewer words, I can't help but think of the true believer in Nineteen Eighty-Four saying "It's a beautiful thing, the destruction of words..."

6 hours ago, beelzebub said:

There's quite the Gippsland 'influence' occurring.. look beyond the players 😉

No mere coincidence

Onley is from Shepparton.

1 hour ago, mauriesy said:

Or that people would shorten phrases to words, like chillax, bae or inspo

Few things make me happier than the thought of you strutting through town, casually throwing around the phrase "Chillax, bae!" 😁

Could be time to rename this thread - clearly no longer relevant to Riley Onley

what a waste of the last 2 pages !

Edited yesterday at 04:421 day by Viscount Cardwell
added content

How about that Onley kid, seems ok.

Nothing but irrelevant BS in all these threads now. I’m out till the new year.

Merry xmas and Happy new year to all.