ABSTRACT
This chapter argues that learning is not necessarily what teaching is or ought to be about or is or ought to aim for. It reviews the relationship between teaching and learning, particularly focusing on contributions from the theory and philosophy of education. The chapter raises some questions about the suggestion that teaching and learning are necessarily and intimately connected. It indicates some problems with the recent rise of the language of learning in educational research, policy, and practice, highlighting how the "learnification" of educational discourse has marginalised a number of key educational questions, particularly regarding the purposes of teaching and of education more widely. The chapter then focuses on the idea of the learner, asking what, in common understandings of learning, it actually means to exist as a learner. Paul Komisar has made a very helpful distinction between teaching as an occupation, as a general enterprise, and as an act.
