Staff Officer Education?

[John T. Fishel]

the duty positions you have in mind. But what I don't know is what you expect each of those duty positions to do. Let me address NATO and multinational staff officers.
Learning Objective (LO) 1: Describe NATO staff functions. Compare those to other coalition staff functions and the staff functions in your own military. Demonstrate how they are similar and how they differ.
LO 2: Demonstrate the ability to perform the roles and functions of C1, C2, C3, C4, C5 ... Cn.
CONDITION: Command Post or Staff Exercise
STANDARD: Produce an acceptible solution to the operational problem posed by the exercise as determined by the exercise controllers.

The format I have suggested is that of Task, Condition, Standard which TRADOC uses. I modified it to use LO (We used TLO and ELO at Leavenworth when I taught there but I never saw much utility in that formulation.) rather than tasks but you get the idea. This is hardly the only way to set up your course but it is a good place to start making the appropriate adaptations - especially ones that fall within the military traditions of the country. Culture, after all, does count.

Hope this is useful to you.

Cheers

JohnT

[120mm]

If I were king of the world, or at least of developing a CGSC-type of curriculum, I would turn the conventional model of learning on it's head and task the "students" to develop the curriculum, to include "how do you defend your country from the most likely, most dangerous and combination of above" threats.

I think the traditional, top-down method of curriculum development has all sorts of problems, including the arrogant assumption that I, the curriculum developer, know better than You, the student, what you need to learn.

[selil]

If I were king of the world, or at least of developing a CGSC-type of curriculum, I would turn the conventional model of learning on it's head and task the "students" to develop the curriculum, to include "how do you defend your country from the most likely, most dangerous and combination of above" threats.

I think the traditional, top-down method of curriculum development has all sorts of problems, including the arrogant assumption that I, the curriculum developer, know better than You, the student, what you need to learn.

I've got to argue pretty strenuously against the bolded section. It presupposes knowledge before it has been attained, and the maturity to admit you don't know what you don't know. Further by derivation you are saying they know what they are about to learn which is a bit circular.

Now, I'm not saying that good curriculum design is easy or that it isn't done poorly in lots of cases. Already earlier in the thread somebody tried to misconstrue skills attainment, education, and learning. There is an absolute difference in the levels of education and realities of training. There is also a consumer, producer, student, scholar paradigm on who is paying for the education, and what the expected outcomes are.

I am no fan of the student as a customer model.

Speaking specifically about military "colleges" and "training" who is the customer? I truly doubt that a bought and paid for asset with oak leaves or bars is the actual customer. It is likely the associated service, the command the individual is coming from, and even more likely future command slots that individual will be associated with.

If you want to create a holistic learner centric (different then learner derived) learning objective based curriculum you have to start somewhere. That place is what the outcome based goals of the cadre are going to be. What is the desired end state (goal state) for their education? Describe, create topic silos as courses, learning objectives at the course level, continue to the lecture/laboratory learning objective level, and return to the top with appropriate assessments based on the learning taxonomy of choice (Gagne, Bloom, etc..).

That kind of holisitic learning structure puts the student first. You can use different strategies to accomplish your goals like war games, game theory, lecture, thought papers, modeling, hands on, etc. into infinity and beyond (<-- Buzz Lightyear quote). The learning strategies are more an instructional/instructor/student relationship and that capability may be a selection of instructor criterion.

Another problem with the student led learning paradigm is that it will only associate with student led instructional fluency. It will not expand the scope and range of instructional strategies or learning methods a student can use. If problems and associated instruction are only within a tight scope or learner pattern than learner fluency will not be challenged and the student will not be truly served by the education. I will immediately admit that learner/instructional fluency is a two sided sword that can negatively impact learning if used inappropriately.

Then again what would I know about curriculum design.

[BayonetBrant]

Then again what would I know about curriculum design.

Your forgot your [sarcasm] tags

[Ken White]

The student will design a syllabus based on what he thinks he will need -- whereas, particularly in a military force subject to the vagaries and friction of war, what is actually required may be -- almost certainly will be -- totally different.

Further, as the Tactics guys at Leavenworth used to point out "What we teach you will apply on a mild June day in gentle terrain and if you have all your personnel and equipment fully trained and operational and you face an average opponent. If any of those parameters change, you'll have to adapt..."

Selecting what to think doesn't equate to how to think.

[120mm]

I've got to argue pretty strenuously against the bolded section. It presupposes knowledge before it has been attained, and the maturity to admit you don't know what you don't know. Further by derivation you are saying they know what they are about to learn which is a bit circular.

Perhaps I'm not being clear, but what I envision is a system where you throw a diverse group of O-4s together in a room for 11 months and tell them "Develop your best plan for satisfying the following security objectives" and then cut them loose. They should be allowed to research, develop and test their learning to their heart's delight.

Unless I'm reading you wrong, it sounds like you're arguing that students lack the ability to "go and find out" in the discovery learning process.

Historically, the CGSC and War College system used to do just that. They were the laboratory where doctrine was formed.

If I were to fault the current education system, it's that everything useful is being taught out in the "real" world. A student graduates from CGSC, or from college, and then has to scramble for a year or two to learn "how things are really done", which is a radical departure from what they just wasted 11 months, or 4 years and six figures worth of tuition "learning."

Edited to add: I'd also fault the education system for being hyper-concentrated on "meta-education", or "learning about learning." You don't have to know any of the taxonomy's or theories, or name your buzz-words, to be an effective teacher. I would suggest that most of the education theory is smoke thrown to cover the fact that they don't know how to teach.

There are some skills that need actual "training", but most education that is worthwhile is "discovered" versus "taught", imo.

[120mm]

The student will design a syllabus based on what he thinks he will need -- whereas, particularly in a military force subject to the vagaries and friction of war, what is actually required may be -- almost certainly will be -- totally different.

So, the "big army" has a better idea of what they "think" the student will need? So what IS big Army's record on being prepared for the next war????

Further, as the Tactics guys at Leavenworth used to point out "What we teach you will apply on a mild June day in gentle terrain and if you have all your personnel and equipment fully trained and operational and you face an average opponent. If any of those parameters change, you'll have to adapt..."

Selecting what to think doesn't equate to how to think.

Agreed.

[Ken White]

So, the "big army" has a better idea of what they "think" the student will need? So what IS big Army's record on being prepared for the next war????

-- and their little SOF counterparts, I'd say about 50-60%; not stellar but predicting the future's never been easy.

Better question. What's yours?

Across the board, they have taught a certain adaptability and they do take a broad based, multi-functional approach as opposed to a student basing his syllabus on his experiences (which may be totally irrelevant in the next war) -- and that's more important than getting the type of war right because wars can and do morph and change while you're playing...