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Differences Between Knowledge And Understanding

Differences Between Knowledge And Understanding (Best)5 min read

Over the years, people tend to assume meaning for words they think they know. If you perform a survey, several people think they understand what the term “knowledge” or the term “understanding” means.

It will surprise you that a higher percentage do not ideally know what they mean.

So in other to avoid those assumptions, we will walk through the differences between Knowledge and Understanding.

In the general term, the word “knowledge” is a noun that involves awareness of a particular fact or situation. In another vein, understanding consists of knowing the reason or cause of a problem or thing.

While knowledge may be fixed, understanding is easily flexible as it involves an individual’s perception of the said situation or subject matter.

Let’s look at a basic human angle example when a student reads a topic, and he can begin to see why the things in the text are the way they are.

That student is starting to understand that subject matter, which adds to his knowledge.

Straightaway, you can see that there exists a difference between these two. But before we dwell on this difference, let’s consider them individually.

Differences Between Knowledge And Understanding

Knowledge:

As we defined earlier, knowledge is the awareness of a particular fact or situation. It is usually a combination of what you understand and don’t understand.

This usually means that knowledge covers a bigger pool of information than understanding. As not all knowledge we possess is understood.

The scope of knowledge is quite widespread, usually beyond the scope of understanding.

Generally, knowledge is usually indisputable facts; you cannot often say a specific knowledge is wrong. As knowledge is most times usually generally accepted.

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For instance, the sun rises and sets. This is a fact that I am aware of and several other people, and I can say it without any prejudice.

This fact can be said to be the knowledge I possess. It doesn’t matter if I understand this concept or not.

These facts you are aware of and can barely be argued about usually form an individual’s knowledge base.

How old you are, your shoe size, time for school resumption, and many other predictable things usually start an individual knowledge base.

Usually, people are revered for how much knowledge they possess, but should that be the case?. Inevitably, a personal knowledge base is a bigger pool than his understanding.

The closer the two grounds mentioned above become, the more equipped you are as an individual.

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Differences Between Knowledge And Understanding

Understanding

Understanding, however, is a different ball game; we defined understanding earlier as being aware of knowing the reason or cause of a situation or thing.

This shows us immediately the restriction in understanding. It is limited only to the knowledge we can process and grasp. We often are aware of many things (inside).

However, most of the things we are aware of will be perceived by us in various ways because we all have different thought processes.

For example, Mr. A may have a different perception of the kinetic theory of matter, while Mr. B may have a different perception.

This variation in perception is simply the general concept of understanding.

Looking at the above illustration, understanding would require work as people have different perceptions.

You, therefore, often have to give reasons for your position on the subject matter; you have to make people understand why you think a certain way, and this perception can be reviewed.

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While knowledge is usually mere facts, understanding is individual-based and varies tremendously.

Usually, in many educational settings, many educationists mistake testing students’ knowledge, but ideally, students should be tested based on what they understand.

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Knowledge vs. Understanding

1. The first difference lies in the definition of the two concepts, while knowledge is the awareness of a particular fact or situation. Understanding is defined as being aware of knowing the reason or cause of a situation or thing. Knowledge is knowing a thing; understanding is knowing the cause or reason.

2. Another major difference between them is existent due to the scope of their definition. From their definition, it’s pretty clear that knowledge is immensely vast compared to understanding. Knowledge is more extensive than understanding.

3. Knowledge is not the valuable ability to check for in a student; understanding is the actual ability every student should possess if you intend to do anything with your knowledge.

4. Knowledge are usually known facts and is typically indisputable. At the same time, understanding is generally based on a person’s perception and is subject to scrutiny and even correction if any default is found.

Conclusion

It has been established that both knowledge and understanding mean different things. It has also been seen that knowledge is broader than understanding and that understanding is a test for a student.

However, it will be wrong to fail to realize that to succeed, you need both knowledge and understanding.

The two are closely interrelated; with neither of them being complete without the other, you cannot understand what you don’t know.

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Also, any knowledge that is not understood is just a memory you can’t use for anything.

Awesome one; I hope this article answered your question.

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