EdMatrix Taxonomy: Should student and educator be collapsed into one?

[bredd]

The organizational data branch of the taxonomy presently has Student Data, Educator Data, and Institutional Data. But this division is based on a conventional model of students attending a school with teachers. It doesn't fit lifelong learning where learner and teacher roles are flexible.

We could collapse Student and Educator into "Person". But, since this is a taxonomy of learning standards we could use "Learner" to emphasize that all people are learners.

Please discuss!

[jgoodell2]

On one hand the concept of all Persons being life-long-learners is correct. On the other hand, people function in different roles in the learning ecosystem. Some data are about the person and some data are about specific roles that the person plays in relation to an education or training organization. Good educators should be life-long-learners (although perhaps historically this has not been a universally accepted idea), so Learner works. Or maybe the overall context is learning so Person also works.

[bredd]

Jim, I agree with both arguments (for and against using "Learner" for the term). Implicit in your statement seems to be that we SHOULD condense Student and Educator into one category. Do you agree?