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Leadership in Values-Based Education, Training and Service In the Military (OBTE)

Outcome of Training & Education: A New Paradigm Taking Hold

In the engagement between a teacher and a student, there are factors affecting the development of a student that often are overlooked. The engagement both reflects and creates a relationship between teacher and student, and this relationship is an essential part of the environment for leaning that always is present and influential whether by design, intuition, or neglect. This aspect of the learning environment has a profound impact on development of the student with respect to mastery of skill or knowledge and more generally with respect to enabling attributes such as confidence, initiative, and accountability. Teachers who are aware of this ubiquitous influence can demonstrate leadership by adapting their engagements with students to address both short-term and long-term considerations. They can help students understand learning and mastery as a pursuit that always has implications and exigencies beyond the task at hand. This chapter addresses various positive and negative aspects of the engagement between teacher and student in terms of nine conditions for a good learning environment. The conditions are presented in the context of three broad categories of a uniquely human approach to learning: Interplay between the tangible and the intangible (1. micro-experiences, 2. inter-temporal reasoning, 3. choice and responsibility), situation awareness and informed engagement (4. reason guided by passion, 5. collaborative reflection and crystallization, 6. recognizing problems with charismatic leadership), and facilitated self-development (7. the struggle is central to development, 8. continually improving perfection in the pursuit of mastery, 9. the temporally extended self).

Dr. Gary E. Riccio is an engineer and behavioral scientist who joined Wexford Group international as a Principal in 2006. He has developed collaborations involving technical, operational, and programmatic experts to develop technology or methodology to train, assess, or augment human performance. He develops teams across Wexford’s distributed sites, supporting initiatives involving interdisciplinary coordination among multiple organizations. Dr. Riccio has been involved in Small Business Innovative Research projects with the U.S. Army Research Institute (Warrior Ethos in Initial Entry Training, Shared Understanding Across Levels of Command, Enhancing Joint Task Force Cognitive Leadership Skills, Training a Joint and Expeditionary Mindset, Blended Learning), primarily with the Infantry Forces Research Unit at Ft. Benning, GA. Dr. Riccio led a multidisciplinary multi-company team of scientists in an investigation of the initiative by the Asymmetric Warfare Group (AWG) in Outcomes-Based Training & Education (OBTE). This work resulted in an edited book on OBTE that was released by the AWG in April 2010.

Dr. Riccio has 25 years of teaching and research experience in bioengineering, neurophysiology, psychophysiology, sensory psychophysics, cognitive psychology, human movement science, control-systems engineering, and human factors engineering. Dr. Riccio managed R&D projects as a scientist in the Air Force Aerospace Medical Research Laboratory and was a tenured professor in the Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology at the University of Illinois. At Exponent Inc., an engineering consulting firm, he served as Program Manager for an effort with the Army’s Objective Force Warrior and developed interdisciplinary teams in scientific and engineering business units. Dr. Riccio received his PhD in Human Experimental Psychology and BS in Electrical Engineering & Neurobiology, from Cornell University. He is an Adjunct faculty member in the Department of Exercise Science at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst.

Mr. Morgan Darwin is a retired Command Sergeant Major with twenty-two years of Infantry and Special Mission Unit experience. Since retirement in 2006, he has worked through Wexford Group international as an independent technical consultant and an advisor to the U.S. Army on preparing forces for Full Spectrum Operations by evolving traditional approaches to training and education in a manner that deliberately fosters leadership, confidence, initiative and accountability within conventional Army tasks and skills. Working with the U.S. Army Asymmetric Warfare Group (AWG), he has been the task lead for Outcomes Based Training and Education (OBTE) projects, seminars and course design. His interests include engineered solutions to energy utilization challenges, infrastructure development in neglected cultures, leadership development strategies, and the conflict between eastern and western philosophies.

Immediately before retirement, Mr. Darwin served at Fort Bragg as a Special Projects Officer responsible for developing new techniques, tactics and procedure to counter emerging National threats, to include associated training and inter-agency coordination. He worked on researching and developing defeat methodologies. He conducted advanced research on new or obscure technologies, extensive historical analysis, establishing requirements and parameters for field trials and computer models, in conjunction with extensive coordination with academia, industry, National laboratories and various Government research facilities. As a Command Sergeant Major and senior enlisted member of a battalion size organization, he was responsible for training, mentoring, organizing and equipping the force. A graduate of the U.S. Army Sergeants Major Academy, Mr. Darwin also served as an Assistant Team Leader and Team Member, Rifle Squad Leader, Team Leader, Machine Gunner and Rifleman.