Navy Training, Part 2: Is It the Right Approach?

Last month, I wrote a little about the history of instructional design, and the viewpoint from which the Navy designs its training. I concluded by asking if the impersonal view that the Navy takes regarding the training of its sailors was really the right approach now, especially considering the educated standing of its enlisted force.

My answer: yes and no.

The biggest thing to remember is that enlisted and officer training are designed to do two different things.

Enlisted sailors are, almost without exception, technicians. Therefore, most enlisted training is designed to teach sailors how to do things and to perform specific tasks, whether it is fix an engine, order supplies or track contacts at sea. This feeds directly into the behavioral approach that the Navy has used in its training for decades. In this case, especially for new sailors, the behavioral approach is probably the best approach to use to teach those skills.

Officers, however, are managers. (I mean here line officers, not necessarily various service corps officers.) They also, for the most part, arrive in the Navy with college degrees. While the fact that they have a degree demonstrates that they can finish college, it doesn’t really demonstrate that they can lead people or that they know much about the Navy, so entry level officer training is broad based in order to teach them about their warfare area (submarine, surface, or air) at the same time that they’re supposed to be learning how to manage people.

The problem with this, though, is that you can’t teach somebody how to be a leader. You can put a person in charge, but that doesn’t make him a leader. Combine that with the fact that most officers don’t know the jobs of the people they’re supposed to be leading and you have a wonderful atmosphere for contempt of your leaders (hint for new junior officers: listen to your First Class Petty Officers and Chiefs, at least for a little while; they know what they’re talking about!).

So officer training, while couched in behavioral tones as it is now, should be more constructivist in nature, relying on the experiences of the students in a facilitative structure. Leadership training at all levels is accomplished this way, but is still delivered in a behavioral style, an odd combination that I feel doesn’t make for the best training available.

I believe that a serious look needs to be taken at the way the Navy conducts its training. Yes, some things are rightly only a behavioral matter. But the Navy could take a much more constructivist view on many of its training needs. Will it? Probably not. Such an approach takes a lot more time and effort than the Navy either has or is willing to expend on it.

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