Mapping the Route of Leadership Education: Caution Ahead

Abstract

Educational experts from the systems analyst school seek to impose research-based techniques on teachers in the place of the knowledge of teaching derived from experience, apprenticeship, and study of educational purpose. Such context-stripped research-based knowledge cannot substitute for professional knowledge. Joe L. Kincheloe (1) One of the hardest things for a successful organization to do is question the assumptions on which its success is attributed. The US military reached its preeminence on the battlefield, in part, due to a highly systematic approach to training and leadership development. Much of the program planning and curriculum in our system of professional military training and education was developed through a systems analysis approach, best illustrated in the Army's use of detailed tasks, conditions, and standards. Systematic training models drive the design, resourcing, execution, and assessment phases of a variety of schools and courses in a multitude of settings and specialties. It is second nature for many in the military to default to these technically rational processes, not only for training in basic soldier skills, but for leader education as well. The personality types of our leaders combine with a planning culture that can result in approaches to leader development more applicable for the industrial age than the information age. At the center of defense transformation is the issue of what will make 21st-century military operations successful. Everything is on the table, from force management, weapons platforms, institutional processes, manning policies, and organizational culture, to educational philosophies and practices used in professional military education. It is in the spirit of engaging in and expanding the discourse on the important subject of leadership education that we wrote this article. One ongoing debate relates to a Competencies Leader Development Framework proposed by the Joint Forces Command (JFCOM) J9 Joint Experimentation Directorate. (2) The initiative is a commendable effort to improve joint education toward the goal of improved joint operations. When J9 developed the proposal, a number of service entities were already in the process of devising leader competency lists, including the Air Force, Army Research Institute, and Army Command and General Staff College. Contractors at Fort Leavenworth also were instrumental in developing a competency map that guided the redesign of Army intermediate-level education. Accordingly, competency mapping had to appear promising to JFCOM. Competency-based program planning is attractive to a military community that holds concrete, rational processes in high esteem. Reviewing the J9 proposal required us to step back and review educational strategies for developing leaders, particularly strategic leaders who guide the course of the military profession. Senior service colleges are charged with educating many of the nation's future strategic leaders. The J9 initiative is an important one because it represents an effort to think seriously about elements of abstract knowledge that are characteristic of the warfighting profession and to ensure that such knowledge is passed to practicing members via an admittedly disparate system of schools and courses. This is no small task. The results of the proposal have implications for every school in the professional military education system involved in leadership development. At stake in this initiative is the process by which the joint community identifies areas for inclusion in the curricula of our service and joint schools and then holds them accountable via the program for the accreditation of joint education. At the heart of any profession is a body of expertise and abstract knowledge that its members are expected to apply within its granted jurisdiction. Those who learn and employ that knowledge in unique contexts are rightly described as professionals; in them lies the heart and soul of the profession. …