I'm not sure what to make of the need to ensure that you hire instructors who have the right content.
I'm doing some work in the Canadian Forces right now. I'm one of those PhDs with no field experience. This means, as a subject matter expert, I'm pretty much useless.
I am trying to work on structure. I think I bring them the inclination to recognize each other as having knowledge and the tools to work together to separate wheat and chaff. Yes, sure, I'm delivering some content. That content is, pretty much guaranteed, out of date and otherwise irrelevant. The content is there cause that is the excuse for having people in the classroom. The real focus for me are the 2nd (how to learn and teach) and 3rd (creating a community of practice) order objectives.
These objectives are pretty much driven by accepting that doctrine and curriculum development/delivery cycles will lag behind practice and that up to date mission/theatre specific knowledge and the sorts of sensibilities that will produce coherence from one rotation to the next need to be handled, at least in good part, horizontally.
That, and the Canadian Forces is a pretty tribal organization. The tribal divisions, and a few perverse incentives, do produce incoherence from one rotation to the next. No amount of bureaucratic intervention is going to fix that.
Bookmarks