Disentangling Knowledge and Understanding

In which I ramble on a bit about nuance

First, a slight detour…

I vaguely recall a meme someone sent me during my Twitter days. I can’t remember who sent it (there are several likely candidates), and I only really remember the gist of it. It went something like, ‘I stop reading your comments after the however.’ I don’t think I responded, but the dismissal of any nuance-based assumption continues to irk, especially as I believe the respondent was (like me) an advocate of evidence-supported learning methods.

The assumption (and I might have been wrong here) seemed to be that nuance and counter-arguments don’t exist in research, when the opposite is true. If you can’t understand the nuance, there can be very little one does understand.

Now I’ll get to the point…

This might make me sound a little full of myself, but knowledge isn’t synonymous with understanding, as the illusion of explanatory depth illustrates. We might know, for example, that interleaving and spacing lead to more effective learning than the alternatives. The bigger question is why? This then leads to other questions, such as why they work well together most of the time, but also why they don’t sometimes.

From a scientific standpoint, assessing understanding is difficult, while establishing simpler forms of learning (like those pesky facts that get in the way of a good story) is relatively straightforward, which is perhaps why curricula often prioritise knowledge over understanding. Many of us know a lot of facts, but bringing these facts together to understand them is a much more cognitively demanding task than recalling snippets of information. 

The confusion between knowledge and understanding isn’t confined to the layperson. According to Joanna Huxster (a researcher in the public understanding of science), even peer-reviewed articles often conflate knowing with understanding (Huxster et al., 2018). Defining the difference between them might at first appear superfluous, but if we are going to design curricula that do more than create superficial knowledge, it’s worth taking the time to investigate these differences.  

Huxster describes knowledge as an atomistic epistemic state, meaning that knowledge is focused on singular, discrete pieces of information. Understanding, on the other hand, represents a holistic epistemic state, or the ability to grasp a body of facts and how they relate to each other. Understanding goes beyond knowledge, requiring the individual to work with learned information while remaining flexible to new information. Nuance matters, as does understanding that theories change over time based on fresh evidence.

Someone with knowledge of climate change, for example, will know that the Earth’s climate is warming, and that carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas. They also know that human activity contributes to greenhouse emissions. These pieces of knowledge can be acquired through various means, including reading, listening, and memorising. We can then assess this knowledge using, for example, a multiple-choice test or other methods requiring limited answers. 

To understand, however, the learner needs to grasp the interconnections between these facts. To assess if the person understands climate change, we’ll have to employ a different assessment method, one that requires more elaborate answers, such as the following tasks:

·      Explain how increased greenhouse gas emissions led to global warming.

·      Explain how different human activities contribute to greenhouse gas emissions.

·      Explain the scientific process through which climate scientists reach their conclusions.

·      Analyse how climate change affects various systems, such as sea-level rise and extreme weather.

·      Evaluate the validity of different claims about climate change.

The scientific consensus on anthropogenic climate change is rock solid, but this doesn’t mean climate scientists agree on every single aspect of its causes, outcomes, and solutions. A fuller understanding of climate change is going to require an appreciation of these disagreements.

An individual with knowledge of climate change might be able to recite facts and figures, but they may struggle when presented with new information or counterarguments. In contrast, someone with a deeper understanding of climate change could apply their knowledge to new situations, critically evaluate new claims, and articulate their understanding in their own words. As this new evidence becomes widely accepted, climate models change to accommodate it.

As learners, we often draw generalisations based on specific examples or observations. This might be a student studying examples of mathematical problems or a trainee surgeon observing a superior carry out a heart operation. This approach, generally referred to as induction learning, involves identifying patterns or rules from observed data or specific instances and using those patterns to make predictions about new, unseen data - the key route towards understanding.

A rookie surgeon won’t learn everything about open-heart surgery through observation because there are a multitude of scenarios that might arise. Rather, they will take what they have learned and use it to inform future judgments. Becoming a surgeon takes many years of study, observation, and practice - you can’t become skilled by watching a video or googling ‘How do I do a heart bypass operation on my 80-year-old gran?’

When we learn, the process must consider what it is we are learning. Google won’t turn me into a heart surgeon, but neither will sitting in a classroom and copying notes on how to do heart bypass surgery. It can teach me something about heart surgery, but I’ll also need to accumulate hours of observation time and hands-on practice. 

Remembering, knowing, and understanding are collectively part of the learning process. At each stage, long-term memory changes. Memorising English monarchs will change my long-term memory (often cited as the key premise of learning), as will learning multiplication tables. But learning is also concerned with what we do with this information. My ability to reel off every king and queen of England is a nice party trick, but has very low utility unless I can connect this information to wider aspects of history. Learning multiplication tables, on the other hand, allows me to become more efficient regarding mental arithmetic, so what we memorise matters more than just memorising.  

Reference:

Huxster, J. K., Slater, M. H., Leddington, J., LoPiccolo, V., Bergman, J., Jones, M., McGlynn, C., Diaz, N., Aspinall, N., Bresticker, J., & Hopkins, M. (2018). Understanding “understanding” in Public Understanding of Science. Public Understanding of Science, 27(7), 756–771. https://doi.org/10.1177/0963662517735429