Prior to joining the army, I was a department dean at an international university for several years. Having joined the army six months ago, it seems timely to put down some first impressions of Army’s education and training from the perspective of a newcomer.
First, it’s worth saying that I’m thrilled to be a part of Army’s training transformation. Army’s very deliberate revision of its education and training since the 2016 Ryan Review is both impressive and a factor that convinced me to join up. I think the idea of developing an intellectual edge is exactly the right move for our strategic environment. Having now participated in Military Instructor Courses in various locations, I’ve been able to see this happening in practice as instructors move towards the sort of educational approaches that foster creative, collaborative and critical thinking. The university I was working at was also trying to move lecturers in this direction, but Army’s approach seems to me to be better coordinated and more thoroughgoing.
But what can Army learn from academia? Army is so much bigger and more spread out than a university, so it would be presumptuous to think that education could or should be the same in the two settings. But I want to draw attention to one feature of my previous educational setting, simply as food for thought: values integration. Let me paint a picture of what this looked like in my university setting before wondering out loud about whether there could be useful applications to Army.
The university that I was at wanted to create scholars, leaders, and citizens who were shaped by a common set of values. This central vision shaped the whole approach to education at every level. Among university leaders, we asked ourselves, ‘What must we do to create scholars, leaders, and citizens who are shaped by these values? What must we introduce? What must we eliminate? How does every element (curricular and non-curricular) contribute to that outcome?’ With that in mind, we created mandatory courses on our values – but this wasn’t enough. We also asked every course coordinator to demonstrate how their Learning Management Plans (LMPs) were fostering the development of scholars, leaders, and citizens who were shaped by these values. For example, the coordinator of a course on cellular biology had to identify the content and classroom practices by which they were nurturing ‘scholarship’ or ‘leadership’ or ‘citizenship’, as well as fostering our common values. Not every course had to equally foster every element – but across our whole programme, we wanted to ensure that our vision really was shaping our educational practice.
In the ADF, we have shared values (service, courage, respect, integrity, excellence), as well as expected behaviours (act with purpose for Defence and the nation; be adaptable, innovative and agile; collaborate and be team focused; be accountable and trustworthy; reflect, learn and improve; be inclusive and value others). Some of these can be associated pretty closely with mandatory courses (e.g. the annual course on workplace behaviour). But would it help us to achieve our vision of a workforce that exhibits these values and behaviours if we saw them further integrated throughout all courses and training activities? Not every course would need to demonstrate that it fosters every behaviour. But identifying the values or behaviours that are relevant for each of our education and training activities would enable us to determine what is lacking, as well as provide opportunities for enhancement. For example, if it were a requirement that LMPs identify the ways in which content or teaching practices were fostering our values and behaviours, it might prompt course designers and instructors to ask, ‘How could I bring teamwork into this task?’ or ‘How can I increase opportunities for reflection in this activity?’.
In the university setting, some lecturers expressed reservations: ‘My job is to teach cellular biology, not all that other stuff!’ But this just required a gradual change of mindset: ‘My job is to contribute to the creation of scholars, leaders, and citizens, shaped by common values. I do that by teaching cellular biology in a way that fosters these values’. It’s not hard to imagine a parallel in the ADF. Rather than ‘My job is to teach truck maintenance', it might be useful to move towards ‘My job is to prepare soldiers to win the next war, by teaching truck maintenance in a way that fosters our values and behaviours’.
Firstly, to paraphrase Forrest Gump, values is as values does. In other words, it is virtually impossible to determine whether or how closely a person holds Army's values unless or until we see them applied.
Training any so-called 'soft' skill (of which values is one) is impossible out of context. Much of the civilian VET system (and in particular competency-based training and assessment) was developed from the Australian Army system pre-1990s and when applied correctly is almost a mirror image of how Army trainers were taught in that period.
One of the basic fundamentals of trainer training was the need to put every lesson into context. In other words, nothing was taught outside of the context, conditions or environment in which it was going to be applied. And lessons learned in both the military and civilian worlds over the past couple of decades is that so-called 'soft' skills cannot be taught outside of the behaviour through which they must be applied.
The other thought concerns separating values when developing Learning Management Packages (LMPs). These are the military equivalent of the civilian VET sector's National Training Packages which themselves suffer poorly when items such as so-called 'soft' skills are separated from the behaviour in which they are applied.
It is a truism that unless an action can be seen it cannot be measured. Assessment in the military today leans heavily towards (but doesn't always reach) a competency-based approach. In other words, competence (behaviour), not knowledge is assessed and evaluated. One cannot 'see' another person's values unless or until they are applied. Now, these values may or may not align with those one expects to see, but at least they can be seen and, where they do not conform to military standards, adjusted.
LMPs today are concise, detailed and clear in their descriptions of what must be done to run an effective and cost efficient training course. To separate learning outcomes into 'soft' and 'hard' skills will, in my experience, reflect the poorer elements of the civilian training packages and begin a drift away from both the purpose and the effect of LMPs the way they are written. This must be avoided if both the purpose and utility of LMPs are not to be lost.
The thrust and intent behind this post are to be applauded and I hope that they generate further discussion on how ADF and Army training can be further refined to meet the challenges of the future. There is much that can be done to create a 'ready now, future ready' force and discussions such as this can only hasten their implementation. But, as someone who was part of, and often led, major reforms to Army training (does anyone remember ATS94?) I can only caution the need for closer consideration of the pathway which brought us to the need for reform before embarking on anything new.
You've given some helpful food for thought.
The civilian equivalent of LMPs is the National Training Package. These were initially created as a means of expressing the standard of skills and knowledge required by employers (also known as competence). The means by which learning was assessed and the training processes evaluated were included as was the context within which such assessments were to be carried out. These packages were developed through functional analysis and approved by employers or their representative groups.
Such a process also underpins the way LMPs are developed, but over the years training packages have taken a different pathway primarily because some felt that so-called 'soft' skills were not given sufficient prominence. Nowadays training packages are more akin to curricula and contain far more information than is really necessary for their purpose.
The important point about LMPs is that they not only highlight what must be taught but also give guidance on the expected performance of learners on-the-job. In such cases all so-called 'soft' skills (such as values, empathy, etc.) are encapsulated in a learner's performance. They are neither applied nor assessed separate to this performance. And while civilian training packages allow for separate assessment LMPs do not. And, in my opinion and experience, nor should they. To paraphrase Forrest Gump: Values is as values does, and knowing what Army (or Defence) values are is far less critical to actually applying them.
Having said that, over the past few years more and more aspects of the civilian training VET system (as it has now morphed into) are being adopted so it seems correct that the question posed in this article should be discussed. One hopes, however, that in doing so the lessons learned by Army (and the wider ADF) since the last major reforms in the mid 1990s are also considered.