Where’s Waldo?

Spot what’s wrong with this sentence from a press release by the British Learning Association:

72% of conference delegates agreed that learning tends not to lead to change, when challenged last week at the British Learning Association’s annual conference at the Institute of Physics in London.

The problem is that the British Learning Association is using learning and training interchangeably. This is understandable since one of the BLA’s predecessors was The Forum for Technology in Training. The press release continues:

Under the working title ‘The Great Training Robbery?’ the Conference opened with a frank exposé of the failings of much of training and learning with all too frequent low achievement and success rates. Delegates were invited to consider their own role, commitment and the concerted effort needed to do something about low success rates. An innovative approach was adopted based on interactive voting devices to determine delegate response and the conference view of the opening propositions and the priorities for change.

Only 51% of delegates said they evaluate for results several months post-learning intervention, but a pleasing 89% stated they would go out of their way to look at the issues raised which apply to their own learning services.

Training may not lead to change; learning is the only thing that does.