What is 'understanding' involving learning?

Question

It appears the word "understanding" is nebulous when used in an educational setting. What's the most rigorous definition you've found for "understanding" when used for learning?

Background:

Every now and then I hear people going into great depth about knowledge vs understanding. They say one might want to strive for deeper understanding and not just knowledge.

Intuitively I see the difference between rote learning (e.g. "the capital of Canada is Ottawa") and deep understanding (e.g. creating new interesting music).

That said, I think there's a large grey area in-between. Say, getting knowledge vs understanding out of reading a book or listening to music.

So what is "understanding" and what is "knowledge"? From a pure linguist perspective, does it have a clear definition?

Am I making sense? Apologize if the question is too vague. :)

Answer 1

I would try to convey the difference like this: If one knows the method for solving a problem, one can apply it to that and equivalent problems, and can communicate that singular method to another. If one understands a method for a problem, one can apply it to similar or perhaps even unrelated problems, further being able to teach the method using multiple approaches to someone else.

A concrete example might be speaking a foreign language - Understanding could be measured by one's ability to compose novel sentences unheard/unread that convey suitable meaning. Knowledge would be set phrases that one had learned on one level, or the vocabulary and grammar necessary for novel composition at another.

From this example it could be reasonably argued that understanding is a superset of knowledge, as understanding carried from other domains cannot be applied to a new one without at least a threshold of knowledge.