At the last CTU residency, on the last day my breakthrough insight was to approach the research question on leader curriculum development at the Command and General Staff College from the perspective of giving voice to the students, who are professional military officers operating at the graduate level and fresh from combat experience in Iraq and Afghanistan.
My insight was to shift the perspective to the student point of view. Previously, I had been relying upon my expertise as a master practitioner of logistics and change management combined with my skill at curriculum development to generate my own ideas of the appropriate set of skills and classroom environment required for best classroom experiences. My insight was that of all the participants in the student education: command, administration, faculty, curriculum development, field army at large, and students, only the students were voiceless in the process. And yet it is a stated goal of the college to develop mature, critical thinking, leaders with a lifelong love of learning who are capable of acting with initiative under conditions of uncertainty, and yet we were not creating the conditions in the classroom for them to learn in this way. Our classroom retained the qualities of industrial age production and education which features mostly lecture from professors with little to no student input in their educational outcome.
Our discussions of personal learning environments allowed me to see that empowering students and ensuring that this change in perspective was established in the college’s infrastructure and processes was far more important and enduring than any specific curriculum content changes that I could arrange. And further, I understood that my own opinions, naturally heavily supported by facts and science, were simply one of the voices should have a vote in the outcome of the research.
We have a new school Commandant, a General officer. fresh from the field, with ideas about the most important educational gaps in the field army that it is our mission to bridge. We have a new civilian Dean who will be a long-term force for stability and wisdom for the processes of education in the college. His commitment to what we call the accountable instruction system is such that transformational changes to our functional processes are beyond the limits of my research. However, the accountable instructional system does allow for the kinds of action research that I propose to undertake. A very important part of my research will be my inquiry into self and improving my own educational practice, along the lines of living theory espoused by Jack Whitehead.
My insight from this week has been that I can be a force for good in this action research project r by becoming the best student I can be and in that inquiry help uncover the qualities we want all students to manifest in our college. A few examples: an attitude towards the value of independent research and critical thinking; speaking truth to power about the results of quality research; creating and using forums where that voice will have meaning and impact. In these times of transformational change in our society, country, politics, and Army, it is more important than ever that voices speak truth to power with conviction about important matters. I am in a position where my opinion will carry weight and have meaning for others. So, I want to ensure that I am an excellent student both in the doctoral process and in my capacity as a teacher and a curriculum developer and an opinion maker in the college.
It happens that our commandant shares my opinion that one of the most important gaps in our field army’s education is in the area of force generation. This is a curriculum area that is rich with the opportunity to educate students on important content and important process which will help them to experience taking responsibility for their own education and being leaders in the Army who will appreciate the importance of that freedom for their subordinates. So, we have an opportunity to model in the classroom the behaviors we expect our leaders to value when they return to the field.
My hypothesis is that by improving and understanding my own optimal personal learning environment I will be able to help create the conditions for improving the personal learning environments of our students in the college and beyond. Our belief is that education does not stop with graduation. Our educational mission continues on past graduation and so we must provide reach back capability to support our students lifelong learning. To that end, I expect to make significant infrastructure changes through use of digital technology to enhance our classroom learning and to support learning in the field. I have already started that project with a professional blog at the college where we revise and extend our remarks concerning classroom materials and seek to engage a wider audience of interested practitioners in the art of army change management. This is already paying dividends and came about as the result of initial rounds of action research that included faculty, administration, students, and curriculum developers.
The link to this “Blog of Log” is: http://usacac.leavenworth.army.mil/BLOG/blogs/dlro/
Our next step is to engage a much wider audience of interested researchers to answer important questions about the educational needs of our students in the area of force generation. This next round of action research will include students of course and we are looking to make an Army wife contribution. A wiki will be a central feature of our inquiry and infrastructure. Tied together with our existing blog to make this a dynamic learning environment for students while they’re here and when they return to the field army.
We’re just starting this project this week as a result of a successful briefing to my commanding general who has given me the green light and high priority to develop this project. I am assembling a team of expert faculty, curriculum developers and students will engage in a series of guided inquiries into future educational needs which I expect to be able to contribute to the future of education project and as the action research to guide my dissertation. I expect the dissertation to include the action research process and my own internal inquiry into improving my own educational practice. I have in mind the diagram we discussed about doing action research in one’s own organization but I don’t have the diagram handy.
Our top level questions are:
1. What do Army Majors need to know about Force Generation?
2. What are the qualities of the educational environment that will best support personal learning environments? (translation: How can we best create the conditions for learning?)
Our supporting questions: these are what we are asking of all the stakeholders to help construct our group knowledge:
1. Who are you and what do you know about Force Generation?
2. What does your organization do in Force generation?
3. What do you think Majors need to know?
4. What can you contribute to our knowledge base?
5. What can majors do with your knowledge?
6. What are your questions about force generation? (we want everyone to learn)
7. What would you do with the answers and why is it important?
8. Who else should be prt of our team?
Our stakeholders list includes a number of Army staff agencies, major commands and organizations that are part of the Generating Force, units and leaders in the field, equipment and personnel providers, administrations, faculty, students, curriculum developers, IT staff (for digital support) and other schools. We have ongoing partnerships with field units to help them learn as they (and we) go thru force generation together.
Pardon the length, but the tale grew in the telling. 😛