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Does a military academy promote student learning?

Article Excerpt
Abstract

Learning outcomes are influenced by the environment in which the learning takes place. This article briefly describes how a military academy environment tends to promote pedagogical preferences and surface learning approaches. A plan to validate this proposition and then to overcome it is outlined.

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I teach information systems to undergraduate students at the Australian Defence Force Academy. I believe that the military academy environment is strongly affecting my ability to develop excellent educational outcomes for my undergraduate students. This observation is not meant to be a casting-of-blame and washing-of-hands. Rather, this article outlines why I believe that this is true and then sets the agenda I will adopt to overcome this constraint. Hopefully, it will resonate with other educators in military academies. In this article, I briefly present my reflections on the impact that the military academy environment has on teaching undergraduates, specifically, teaching them the fundamental knowledge and skills to design and build databases. First, I set the scene with some reflection on my starting point; how did I come to be here and what does that give me as a starting point? Then I relate some important factors that the environment in which I am making this journey brings to bear; specifically the environment of a military academy. After that scene-setting, I describe the course that I am using as a benchmark by which to measure my learning progress, how the course has evolved and why. It is on this basis that I describe my reflections and come to reveal the most recent insights I have attained about teaching in a military academic environment.

Author's Background

I have previous experience in training and educating people in the university, technical and further education (TAFE), community education, and workplace environments. My background leaves me with Haggis's (2002, 210) "complex mix of ideas, values, and experience that are only selectively influenced by formal theory." I categorise myself as a Constructivist sympathiser (Merriam & Caffarella, 1999) and feel that much of my approach to education to date has lacked the powerful result that I believe all learning should provide: changing the way we perceive reality. As Merriam and Caffarella (1999, 249) understate it, characterising learning only as a change in behaviour "fails to capture some of the complexities involved." My first real experience as a teacher at the tertiary level has all been at the Australian Defence Force Academy.

The Australian Defence Force Academy (ADFA)

The Australian Defence Force (ADF) is committed to highly trained, well-educated officers (McLachlan, 1997). The ADF maintains a dedicated educational institution, ADFA, at which a range of education is delivered. This might best be described in three levels: military training, academic education, and professional studies (Smith, 1997). At...