Commentary on “Relational Understanding and Instrumental Understanding” by Richard R. Skemp

Skemp distinguishes between ‘relational understanding’ which is “knowing what to do and why” and ‘instrumental understanding’ which is “described as rules without reasons.”

In his opinion, “pupils whose goal is to understand instrumentally…won’t want to know all the careful groundwork…” True for some students but not for all students since it is possible to convince and engage the student in the groundwork or theory. Like he said “if people get satisfaction…[they may] try to understand relationally new material.” Skemp also claims that instrumental mathematics is usually easier to understand.” Is this the case for everyone? Each student has his/her own unique way of learning; some are visually learners, some are audio learners while others are hands-on learners. What is easier to understand depends on the student’s learning ability.
However, I agree that sometimes “relational understanding of a particular topic is too difficult” and “takes too long.” Thus, forcing teachers to turn to instrumental learning. After all, life is not without challenges. These challenges include “over-burdened syllabi” which Skemp claims, "almost all syllabi would be much better if much reduced in amount so that there would be time to teach them better.” Instead of always reducing course content, isn’t better to find an alternative means of teaching that better facilitates learning? Furthermore, I do not think it’s always fair and better to teach students less materials.

According to Skemp, relational learning will provide students with advantages such as "building up a schema” and/or increasing self-confidence since there are “ways of getting there without outside help.” I, however, think that the combination of relational and instrumental understanding will provide students with the most benefits to learning as relational understanding will cover the weaknesses of instrumental understanding and vice versa. For example, instrumental learning often follows a rigid set of instructions and not as adaptable to other situations. Relational learning however, fosters independent thinking and is more flexible for use in other situations.