23 Jan 22
This week I wanted to start a series on teaching critical thinking and what I have learned about that over the years. This area is extremely important to me as I feel like it is a vital human skill that we are lacking these days with my peers and even our younger generation. I feel like it is something that I was taught all of my life by my parents and had no idea.
In 2015 I began researching problem-based learning theory as a subset of andragogy. I can confidently state that this was THE FIRST TIME I have ever been introduced to any type of learning theory at all. Prior to this, in my military experience I was only taught about Bloom’s taxonomy of learning with cognitive, affective, and psychomotor skills that lead to effective teaching. This, of course, was a military instructorship course called the Air Combat Command, Classroom Instructor Course (ACC-CIC). This course is a pre-requisite to be a formal schoolhouse instructor within Air Combat Command which I took before my first formal schoolhouse instructor assignment in Einseiderlhof, Germany.
I don’t take it with a grain of salt that my very first time being introduced to actual research-based learning theory was of my own accord while trying to better myself as an instructor while attending the United States Air Force Weapons Instructor Course I spoke about previously. I believe that this is a complete failure on the entire USAF instructor system, and it is one that I have worked diligently to correct since 2015 when I began learning about it. So much so actually, that I took up a graduate course at Boise State University in the Organizational Performance and Workplace Learning (OPWL, pronounced opal) to further my academic and professional toolkit.
One of my first classes at Boise State allowed me to write a research paper on problem-based learning. I took that class and paper in 2016 to further develop my peers and subordinates by teaching what problem-based learning theory was and why it matters. More importantly, since then, I have morphed that class into teaching my peers, subordinates, and superiors about how to teach critical thinking. All of that leads me to this post and the start of this series in my personal blog. I will attempt to use my own words and lessons only and avoid too many references to other philosophies, doctrine, and educational doctors. I think that if I can relate my own experiences in teaching critical thinking then you can gain insight and go learn some new and crazy things for yourselves about teaching critical thinking.
So, why is critical thinking important? Critical thinking is a human interaction skill that ensures survival of our species. Simply put, critical thinking is the key link to be presented with a problem that you do not have a book or a checklist in front of you to solve and you are expected to “figure it out”. In my experience the two responses you get from presenting problems to people without their knowledge are 1) Work and 2) Freeze. Some of you may think of this as “fight or flight” but I don’t like those terms for what we are getting after since flight can be a correct and appropriate response for some problems and so can fight.
Lesson 1: Work
When I first started unexpectedly giving my students problem sets with absolutely no instruction at all it had some mixed responses that allowed me to observe human behavior like I have never been able to before. Here is an example scenario for you:
The student is in a pseudo-combat scenario on a live-fire training range. The student was presented with some information about a friendly reconnaissance force within their area of operations that had specific communication reporting windows. They were given a general area for where this team would be conducting operations so they could avoid delivering effects within that area so as not to compromise the element or deliver effects on that element resulting in fratricide. Most students would take this into account and would attempt to focus on this element during mission planning as they thought it was their priority. I would then re-adjust their focus to the primary mission which was to assist a partner force in securing a route for follow-on operations. Once they were focused on the primary mission, I would leave them alone for planning until with was time to execute the mission with live assets on the training range.
During the training I would start the mission out with some “troops in contact” situations with the partner force. Eventually we would end up with about 2-3 targets that were needing to be “serviced” with effects which was a daunting task for some and easy for other to handle. Either way, my “curveball” was to have the reconnaissance force come up on the net in the middle of all of this other chaos with yet another problem. To exacerbate the problem even further, I wouldn’t allow the reconnaissance force to have communications with my student directly. Instead, the reconnaissance force could only talk with the aircraft overhead that were already being tasked with other targets by my student… needless to say, this was a challenge for not only my student on the ground, but for the pilots in the air as well. Now, the entire team must figure this problem out together, without any coordination.
For a breakdown of what the problem actually is:
1. The student must service 1 target from a dislocated partner force that he has communications with, and that force is taking casualties.
2. The student must service 1 target that he is directly in contact with in his escort force.
3. The student must service 1 target for a reconnaissance force that is dislocated and that he has no communications with.
4. The student only has 2 aircraft overhead and 1 section of artillery (3x 155mm howitzers) to use in order to ensure that all enemy are killed with minimal loss of life on the friendly-force side while also ensuring that he directs the attacks on the correct targets for each location.
5. Time is an issue as each minute he takes to complete the attack from when it began there is another loss of life on the friendly force side…
(Yes, this is meant to present the worst-case scenario and is meant to be extremely stressful)
This scenario was executed by me as an instructor probably a dozen times with a dozen different students over a 2-year period. The amount of data I got out of this one scenario is amazing and I want to share those with you.
First, find work or freeze right? Well, those were the two responses I always got from my students with this scenario. The decent ones would “find work” they would start attacking parts of the problem that they could, or they would start tasking the aircrew to help them work through the problems. Most of the latter would work artillery on the dislocated partner force target, while delaying aircraft attacks on their own contact situation and allow the aircrew to “build the target information” for the reconnaissance team. Those were all valid solutions and yielded pretty decent effects. They took all of the information they had and worked the targets while simultaneously filling the gaps for the information they didn’t have. It was amazing to watch.
On the other hand, we had a lot of guys that just froze. When I say froze that is exactly what I mean. They literally shut down, couldn’t even form a sentence, or just stared at a map or a notepad or a situational awareness display without doing anything else. It was almost like their gears were turning but the cogs were not engaged to make things happen. Often, when this happened, I would have to step in and ask what they were doing. When I wouldn’t get a response at all I would have different actions for how I would respond (more on that in a later post).
So, how did I teach someone who froze how to start fixing that problem? Well, I taught them a vulgar pneumonic that they couldn’t forget at all: FUCK…
Most people ask me, “Why FUCK John?” Well simply put, the first time that you get shot at and pretty much for me every time thereafter, that was the first word out of my mouth and most of the guys around me as well. So, if you’re already saying it, then go ahead and use it!
F – Fight, U – Understand, C – Communicate, K – Kill
Yeah, that was it… and that is where I will lead you down with this first lesson in critical thinking. Give your students that falter something to help work through problem solving.
Fight is me telling the student that his first job in this type of situation is to protect himself. That is, do whatever you need to do in order to save yourself and increase the survival of the guys to your left and right. The fact is, if he goes down, then someone else will have to start from scratch which will cause further loss of life. So, no matter what, fight back, shoot your weapon, find cover and kill as many of the enemy as possible while gaining an understanding of the entire situation.
Understand is meant for my student to build on his situational awareness. While he is fighting back there are commands getting shouted out, enemy positions, heavy contact areas, distances, directions, etc. There is a ton of data being communicated! Listen and understand what is being communicated around you! Once you have an understanding of what is going on then you need to move to the next step.
Communicate! Our job was to communicate what was happening on the ground with the aircraft overhead in order to direct deadly and precise firepower onto enemy positions. DO THAT! But don’t just stop at communicating with the aircraft. Make sure you are communicating with your ground team as well so they don’t maneuver into a position that will cause them harm with your firepower that you are directing.
Kill is fairly simple. Directing the firepower onto the appropriate target will kill the enemy and end your firefight. DO THAT!
When I started teaching this pneumonic my students would completely turn themselves around within about 3 training missions of this instruction. What surprised me is that they had never been given any type of instruction to work through a problem set like this in their lives up until the point that they froze and then had to apply the pneumonic themselves.
So, why the long post John? When you start teaching your students about critical thinking, my first lesson was discovering that my students that were struggling had never heard of a process to assist them in critically thinking through a problem set. I also discovered that they didn’t have the same upbringing I did where I felt like I was always being taught how to critically think. (More on that in another post on critical thinking)
I hope that this lesson helps you out… I have A LOT more to teach on this same subject. Thank you for hanging in there with me this week!!!
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