When theory and reality collides, what happens? Learning!

Michael Paul Ervick, MBA, Adjunct, Seattle University

Usually on the first day of a graduate course I often ask my students if they have learned how to learn.  Most think they have.

Already knowing the answer, I ask those students from India and China how many hours a day they study.  They share that they are tutored for two hours in the morning; they attend classes for eight and then tutored for another two in the evening.  That is a total of twelve hours a day when school is in session.  While most of my American students are often confounded by the idea that students would study so hard; when they hear that it’s the best way to get a job with the best companies in the United States, a big light bulb goes on.

I often share a Jan L. A. van de Snepscheut quote with my students and ask them to tell me what the author means.

“In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice. But, in practice, there is.”

After reading the quote for one class, a lively debate ensued and took us down the usual rabbit trails and then it ended with an unusual question.  What is the difference between a fact and a theory.  I then shared the views of Stephen Jay Gould, who wrote:

“Facts and theories are different things, not rungs in a hierarchy of increasing certainty.  Facts are the world's data.  Theories are structures of ideas that explain and interpret facts.  Facts do not go away while scientists debate rival theories for explaining them.”

After some additional debate, a student declared the following conclusion –

“it sounds a theory is how we hope things work and reality is how they actually work”.

After a pause, I looked around the room and asked the students if they found any irony in the statement made by their fellow student.  After some discussion, they concluded that this view represented what the student thinks a theory might be, and thus it is the student’s theory about theories.

A student from across the room then asked, “if a theory only explains an individual’s perspective of reality, why do we need to study it?”  Again the debate raged as individuals began to run out of answers and offered up guesses that might please the instructor.  I brought the debate to a close and shared the insight of the late, great Dr. W. Edwards Deming once summed up theory as follows:

"Rational prediction requires theory and builds knowledge through systematic revision and extension of theory based on comparison of prediction with observation.  It is an extension of application that discloses inadequacy of a theory, and need for revision, or even new theory.  Again, without theory, there is nothing to revise.  Without theory, experience has no meaning.  Without theory, one has no questions to ask.  Hence without theory, there is no learning."

In very simple terms, our theory is our most current interpretation of reality. 

We cannot begin to understand the importance of theories until we find ourselves willing to openly put our theories to the test in light of new facts and information; even though we feel the discomfort of our own cognitive dissonance; and we realize we are engaged in the learning process.  It is not until our willingness to discard our own ideas and incorporate elements of another’s theory into our theory that we have an indication that learning has indeed occurred.  But the transformation is complete until we have accepted the notion that because our perspective on reality is never perfect, that our theories never stop evolving, and lifelong learning never stops turning on the light bulbs.