There is an invisible world behind professors and students: the world of pedagogical experts.
At the William J. Perry Center for Hemispheric Defense Studies, we strive to create educational programs that challenge our participants to think critically about security and defense issues in global and regional strategic realms. In 2024, we conducted a new Defense Education Pedagogy (DEP) course to examine how defense educational institutions design and deliver their programs. For nine weeks, 80 practitioners from 15 Latin American countries met virtually to compare and discuss their respective approaches to defense education. We will conduct a second course in 2025.
The 2024 course, designed and conducted by Perry Center Professor Dr. Luis Bitencourt, provided a forum for participants to share experiences. The course began by seeking to build consensus on the peculiarities of defense education. Participants discussed pedagogical approaches to curriculum design, analyzed requirements for designing learning objectives, presented teaching methodologies, and described evaluation processes in use. They also discussed how technological evolution in many areas related to defense is affecting training and education. They noticed that attention to quality and pedagogical standards vary extensively among educational institutions.
The course underscored longstanding challenges and revealed new ones related to defense education. Although some institutions have sophisticated and traditional pedagogical structures, there is considerable distance between the pedagogue and the faculty. Traditionally, defense education relies extensively upon lessons learned; as such, many professors are retired military members who share their experience acquired in combat situations, but they do not necessarily have teaching abilities. Bridging this gap is a challenge for education experts.
Whereas faculty focus on “what” to teach, pedagogues focus on “how” to teach. The most successful programs combine these approaches – whether in a physical classroom or a virtual one.
