Educating for what? PME, the ADF and an uncertain 21st century

The Australian Defence Force (ADF) recognises that changes in Professional Military Education (PME) are required for Australian defence personnel to develop a sophisticated understanding of the full spectrum of power. Australian PME needs to be contemporary and future focused, to extend from an ADF cultural orientation to learning, and be developed and delivered by expert educators. A positive recent step is the JPME Continuum which is a framework to integrate learning across the careers of officers. It shifts education for officers from three large “steps” towards a “slope” in which multiple but smaller educational opportunities are available. The paper recommends initiatives for curriculum and pedagogy which will enable PME to be more accessible, more diverse, more relevant, and ongoing, including: diverse and heterogeneous curriculum, development of teachers and pedagogical expertise, an approach to critical thinking as a disposition, classroom practices that allow students to deal with complexity, academic discomfort, uncertainty.