Counterinsurgency and Professional Military Education

I alluded to last week on Neil's original article, and see that Dr. Moyar wrote an excellent commentary that we have made a lot of progress in reforming Army education, and I also assisted Marine Corps EWS, their great cadre led by COL Brian Beaudreault and some great majors and captains over there with evolving the way the teach. Since July when I did my two day workshop, I have returned three times for Bill Lind's Advanced Warfighting Seminar, and Dr. Bruce Gudmundsson's Case Study classes, and the course has jumped leaps and bounds forward from previous years.

The Army and Marine courses I have worked with (as well as some with the Brits, and police departments here) are using Outcomes Based Training and Education (OBTE) and one of its methods of teaching called the Adaptive Leader Methodology (ALM).

After seven years of research on Army Education adn training, I found that the Armys training system creates dependencies that flow from task deconstruction intended for universal application rather than a more cohesive concern for development of the individual. Similarly, Army schools and courses provide instruction to Soldiers and leaders that span both training and education, each with their unique requirements. Yet somehow learning that is durable and useful across the entire spectrum of operational settings. With ever increasing application of technologies and new TTPs was not produced.

I concluded from my observations of training and education -- especially those conducted in institutional settings -- that there is far too much emphasis on "presenting" instruction. This occurred everywhere, whether it is a conference (in practice a lecture format), discussion, the dependence upon power point and a script is far too prevalent.

Similarly, objective evaluations to assess the extent of learning had more to do with determining the extent of short-term recall than any real measure of whether learning occurred. I recognized that much of this is an inevitable result of too few instructors, too few training developers, too many topics, too little time, and a desire for conformity and uniformity in information presented to students. But the result is that little procedural and declarative knowledge is retained unless it is acted upon and constantly refreshed. More importantly, many of the end users of the "product," the commanders of units, dissatisfied with their return on investment.

While some knowledge will come with experience, it is also a reflection of a capacity for judgment; that capacity was not sufficiently developed when the student attended schools. When course design revolves around tasks and blocks of time to teach them, the developmental needs of the attributes students need were often lost or ignored. The focus of attention tended to be on an event and not on individuals whose development is the reason for the event. I kept saying that if Army does not get it at the tactical level, how are we going to get it at the operational or/and strategic level of development?

What we did with years of thoroughly study on how the Army trains, was to develop a practical solution. While at Georgetown, we called it the Adaptive Course Model, then later, while working at TRADOC's ARCIC Forward, it was changed to Adaptive Leader Course, and finally has come to be known as the Adaptive Leader Methodology (ALM). The name means little to us as long as it worked.

ALM stresses effective decision-making and adaptability through experiential learning. In keeping with the outcomes-based approach to training, ALM focuses on the fundamental principles (the "why") and encourages experimentation and innovation. Aspiring leaders are allowed to try, and sometimes fail, as they struggle to solve increasingly complex tactical problems. Each individuals strength of character is tested through a crucible of decision-making exercises and communication drills that require the students to brief and then defend their decisions against focused criticism from their peers and instructors.

ALM emphasizes nurturing effective decision-making and adaptability through experiential learning. Experimentation comes first through the execution of Tactical Decision-Making Games or as they are called at West Point, Exercises (TDEs) followed by student briefings of their decisions, plans or orders.

The student explains himself and responds to criticism from his peers and instructor. The group then executes an intense instructor-facilitated after-action review (AARs). The "teaching" is accomplished through these AARs as the students discover for themselves the concepts and principles included in that lessons learning objectives.

Only after the event with AAR has occurred is the "theory" or doctrine formally introduced by the instructor. The students generally find themselves saying something like this: "Wow! That is what you call it!" There are no preparatory reading assignments or lectures prior to the execution of the TDE. Instead, these readings come afterward, allowing the cadets to more effectively absorb the information within the context that they already established during their experimentation in the classroom.

In the summer of 2007, I was introduced to members of the Asymmetric Warfare Group who were also tackling with ways to evolve Army training doctrine to improve unit performance for irregular operations. Their approach was called Outcomes Based Training and Education (OBT&E), an idea championed by COL Casey Haskins, who at time I met him more than two years ago, was commanding an Army training brigade for training infantry Soldiers. I was so impressed by his work on evolving OBT&E training approach at initial entry training (IET) that I incorporated it into my recent book Manning the Legions (Praeger October 2008). We now had a "principles" structure to overarch ALM.

Don Vandergriff
[email protected]
571-229-0962