AbstractThis article explores some of the relationships between two fields of discourse—philosophy of education and human resource development. From the first field, the concepts of education and training are analyzed within a broad liberal education paradigm. The article argues that there is some common conceptual ground between the two concepts but also that significant differences between the two means that they cannot be seen as coterminous or equivalent. In light of this discussion, the article then draws some parallels with the performance and learning paradigms in human resource development (HRD), arguing that the learning paradigm is conceptually richer and more comprehensive than the performance paradig