Title: Transforming Unit Training with the Science of Learning
Abstract: [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] The Army currently in the midst of a multiyear effort to optimize training and education across the force to ensure it ready for any conflicts. The U.S. Army Operating Concept forecasts conflicts as complex endeavors, requiring agile and adaptive leaders and organizations to address hybrid threats and complex environments. (1) To prepare for these challenges, the Army sees education as its primary tool. In a July-August 2015 article in Military Review, Lt. Gen. Robert Brown, then commanding general of the U.S. Army Combined Arms Center (CAC), states that enabling education is the most reliable strategic hedge in investment that the Army can make in the face of an uncertain future (2) Brown further describes the status of the Army's educational system as inadequate for addressing the growing complexity, volatility, and uncertainty of the twenty-first century security environment (3) To address this shortfall, there are several ongoing efforts to improve the Army's formal professional military education (PME) system, primarily through the establishment of the Army University, which expected to increase rigor and effectiveness in all Army courses. (4) Regardless of these efforts, PME's scope and duration are insufficient to effectively transfer all knowledge necessary for professional soldiers and leaders. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Operating in our complex modern world requires our leaders and formations to be agile and adaptive, but we currently do not have a system in place to give them all the skill sets and capabilities necessary to win. The overarching problem that training not treated as learning, especially in the operating force. Unit commanders often expect soldiers and leaders to arrive at their units following PME with all the necessary knowledge to perform as a part of the team. (5) Without significant expansion of PME, however, this expectation unrealistic. Compounding this problem, Army operational training doctrine such as Army Doctrine Publication 7-0, Training Units and Developing Leaders, does not provide sufficient guidance or direction to plan effective learning experiences. Many in the operating force view the training they conduct more as rehearsals of skills rather than deliberate experiences to learn new skills or knowledge. (6) Where PME embracing evidence-based learning practices from academia, doctrine for training does not take advantage of the advances in the learning sciences. To prepare its leaders and formations to win in a complex world, the Army must get more educational value from training conducted in the operating force. The Army can accomplish this by applying the science of learning and instructional design to create training events that not only are realistic but also transfer necessary knowledge and provide sufficient motivation. The Army must develop doctrine and guidance based on a constructivist philosophy of cognitive learning theory and provide commanders with tools to design training as deliberate learning experiences. Defining the Problem To manage the development of its leaders, the Army uses a structure of domains in which training and education occur: institutional, operational, and self-development. (7) According to doctrine, training and education occur in each of these three domains, but to varying degrees. The operational domain characterized by an emphasis on training, particularly as a member of an operational unit but also through broadening experiences. The institutional domain, though, where education takes primacy. The Army University, a part of the institutional domain, has recently begun sweeping changes to ensure courses across the Army are using evidence-based practices for instruction and activities. However, these changes can only be expected to have a small effect on a leader's development over the course of a career. For example, an armor officer taking command of a battalion has spent as few as twenty months in resident PME over the course of the officer's career up until that point (4. …
Publication Year: 2016
Publication Date: 2016-11-01
Language: en
Type: article
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Cited By Count: 1
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