More information at the Conference webpage

The Conference is to be held at the Joint Services Command and Staff College, UK Defence Academy, Shrivenham, Wiltshire, 9th, 10th & 11th December 2009. Initiated and sponsored by the International Association for Military Pedagogy , the conference is also co-hosted by King College London's Defence Ethics Network and Hull University's Military Ethics Education Network.

The core interests of the three groups involved will be covered in a complementary way. The broad conference theme will look at the competencies, skills and abilities across the board that are required and expected at the different levels of the military hierarchy. It will ask questions such as who needs to know what, and how does this change through careers? For example, is it still appropriate to separate training and education in the age of the strategic corporal? Individual papers will address the pedagogical challenges of delivering training and education, both in the broader sense, and with reference to the skills required for different levels of moral autonomy. Other sessions will look in depth at ethical and legal awareness within the military environment and address the question of what behaviour is appropriate from different ranks - from initial recruit up to Chief of Defence Staff.

As with previous international events organised by the International Association for Military Pedagogy, delegates will be drawn from senior military officers, parliamentarians, academics and senior government officials, charities and NGOs. The Secretary of State for Defence, the Right Honourable Bob Ainsworth MP will be attending the event and delivering an address on the conference theme. Trainers and educators from the different military training and educational establishments around the world will be invited. The programme format will comprise a mixture of 20 minute paper presentations and side-sessions working out who can be expected to know what, where and when.

All three organisations involved are keen to ensure that their findings are disseminated to as wide an audience as possible and a selection of papers from the proceedings will be published. Selected papers from the 2008 Defence Ethics conference were published in a special edition of the Journal of Military Ethics, 'Saying No: Command responsibility and Selective Conscientious Objection' (Vol.8, Issue 2, July 2009). The Military Ethics Education Network's most recent publication is Carrick, Connelly & Robinson (eds), Ethics Education for Irregular Warfare (Ashgate, 2009), while the International Association for Military Pedagogy, has a forthcoming volume by Annen & Royl (eds) Educational Challenges Regarding Military Action: Studies for Military Pedagogy, Military Science & Security Policy Volume 11 (Peter Lang, 2009).

As well as an opportunity to contribute to the written scholarly debates in this area, the three-day conference provides an opportunity to engage with practitioners, policymakers and professionals in both panel discussions and more extended informal interaction beyond this environment.

If you are interested in giving a paper in one of the areas that the conference will be focusing upon, please can you email Mrs B Oliver boliver.jscsc@da.mod.uk with your suggested paper title and a brief abstract by October 2nd 2009. Alternatively, if you are interested in simply attending the event, please indicate this to Mrs Oliver so that we can ensure you are included on the formal conference invite that will be forthcoming shortly, along with the accommodation details and booking form.

We very much look forward to seeing you in December!

Co-convenors: Victoria Syme-Taylor, Director of External Relations, Defence Studies Department at the Joint Services Command and Staff College, Defence Academy of the UK, and President of the International Association for Military Pedagogy. : Dr David Whetham, King's College London, Defence Studies Department at the Joint Services Command and Staff College, Defence Academy of the UK.

Dear Colleagues, Members of the IAMP:

Registration form HERE!

Please send the registration form before the 4th of April by e-mail at karoliina.vuorijarvi@mil.fi, by fax to +358 9 181 46560 or by regular mail to National Defence University, Department of Education, P.O.Box 7, FI-00861 HELSINKI, FINLAND

Those of you who attended the 7th International Conference on Military Pedagogy in Bucharest will recall that a decision was made to have the 9th International Conference on Military Pedagogy in Finland.

You are cordially invited to the 9th International Conference on Military Pedagogy organized by the National Defence University and to be held at the same time with the 5th Conference on Military Sciences.

The plan for the conferences is as follows:

May 19: Arrival in Helsinki (Helsinki-Vantaa Airport) and at the National Defence University (Santahamina). Opening of the IAMP conference: presentations and discussions.

May 20: Second day of the IAMP conference: presentations and discussions.

May 21: Participation in the 5th Conference on Military Sciences. The main theme is “The Changing Face of Warfare”. This theme will be approached and analyzed also from a military pedagogical point of view.

May 22: Second day of the 5th Conference on Military Sciences.

The organizers of the conferences reserve the right to modify the program and include e.g. some evening tours.

We invite all old and new members of the IAMP to contribute to the following planned sessions (on 19th and 20th of May; also on 22nd of May):

1) Action competence – Theory & Practice

2) The changing nature of security threats and the static nature of the military educational institutions – some new ways to arrange the military education more successfully

3) The link between leadership and military pedagogical studies

(During the IAMP conference we will get some experiences of a Pedagogical Leadership Laboratory.)

If you have any questions about the conference, please do not hesitate to contact the point of contact LTCOL, Ph.D. Juha Mäkinen (juha.makinen@mil.fi). We highly appreciate information about your willingness to join us in the conferences whenever it fits into your schedule.

Main idea: The historical roots of the IAMP in general and the military pedagogical ones in particular need to be self-reflected by our experts both individually and collectively, in order to be prepared for the future challenges and expectations facing us. As it is said in the constitution of the IAMP we are “aiming at assisting, developing, improving, and establishing professional military institutions of advanced learning”.

This call for papers is directed both to our “old” and our “new/young” members, meaning that those feeling to be relatively experienced in our field are recommended to reflect on their personal “military pedagogical” contributions while writing a state-of-the-art revisited version of their main military pedagogical ideas and core interpretations to form an exemplary “ring in the chain” of the IAMP community. For those who feel that they belong to “newcomers” of the IAMP, we offer an opportunity to analyze, even critically, our canonical past/present while giving their contribution for us and for the future of the IAMP.

When we reflect on our past as an informal network of military scholars and then as a formal association, our roots in the discussions at the NTG WG IT&ED (=NATO Training Group, Working Group on Individual Training and Education Developments) already in 1999 (Toiskallio 2000) are worth recalling. Since those days, these conversations have been very interesting and enriching, although we have often experienced problems in understanding each other (Florian 2002). According to the now deceased Dr. Heinz Florian (cf. Florian 2002, 5), problems arose even when we used the same English words, due to the diversity of our historical, cultural, national, individual, and social backgrounds.

Despite of these kinds of challenges in the midst of us some holistic and uniting approaches have been elaborated by our colleagues. One such a holistic framework has been clarified by the professor, Dr., Jarmo Toiskallio by his hermeneutical military-pedagogical planning model
(cf. e.g. in Micewski 2003,119).

According to the survey for the members of the IAMP (Raviv 2007) the lack of shared and coherent conceptual framework is one of the main challenges of the IAMP. Figure 1 shows in an explicit form a proposal to such a coherent framework hopefully shared by the members of the IAMP and explained from a various national and individual perspectives and positions. It goes without saying that such a holistic framework can be shared by us despite of our position in the debates on the “pedagogy” (often used especially by Continental-Europeans) versus “training and education” (often used especially in other parts of the world) or then in the discussions ranging from “pedagogical-educational-training studies” versus for example leadership and behavioural studies.

Through the framework, such as drawn to the figure 1, we can give individually and collectively our own contribution to the conceptual level understanding of us but additionally in a practical manner closely linked to the practices of the teachers, the students and the researchers of our military educational institutions. Both of the educators and our students are coming from different kinds of societies and cultures having different kinds of expectations and competencies influencing inevitably to the outcome of our schooling. At the same time the changing nature of our areas of operations (i.e. peace-time; areas of crisis management operations; the nature of warfare) is rapidly changing. The tools (=the teaching methods and means to educate) available for us as the military educators are changing and our capabilities to use them effectively can be improved. In the midst of these turbulent features our understanding of the learning objectives and the intended outcomes of our schooling is changing or is it really? We seem to be living in such a situation that not only “a right and an appropriate answer” to one single question is needed but many aligned and balanced answers to all these kinds of questions and also in practice at our military educational institutions are inevitably needed.

Structure of the publication: Will be planned based on the contributions of the individual writers.

Deadline: By the end of August 2007 a personal agreement to write an article to this book including the title/heading of your article.

By the end of this year (2007) to write a draft of the article.

By the end of February in 2008 to write a final version of the article.

The chief editor of the publication and POC is LTCOL, Ph.D. Juha Mäkinen (juha.makinen@mil.fi).

The IAMP wishes to thank all the participants and especially our Israeli hosts for the excellent conference.

We wish to inform our members and all those otherwise interested on what was agreed on the final session of IAMP Conference in Jerusalem 2007

Agenda items approved by the conference are in Bold.

1. Approval of decision to postpone election of new President and Board until 2008.

2. Congratulations given to Finland for successfully running the IAMP website and approval for them to continue providing this excellent service for members.

3. Approval of decision that Board is to work on vision statement for IAMP and this will be added to the website.

4. Proposal for papers from Jerusalem to be edited and published. This was approved and Professor Kasher’s team agreed to edit and the Finnish National Defence University agreed to publish these papers.

5. The proposed annual conference in Helsinki was resoundingly supported and approved.

6. Before the proposed conference in Helsinki it was agreed that IAMP members would discuss their plans and ambitions for the conference. In particular members are encouraged to suggest areas for discussion. Proposals so far have included the desire to talk about leadership, facility development and curriculum development.

7. In addition, it was agreed that the format of the conference at Helsinki would be revised. It would include more small group work to allow the discussion of topics of interest to particular members.

8. Proposal was also made that future annual conferences have joint publications, and that the format of delivery for papers be more flexible to include posters and round table discussions. Also proposal to invite our students to future conferences.

9. Approval of decision that IAMP have workshops as well as the annual conference. The UK DA is to host a workshop in Spring 2008. Topics that could be the focus of discussion included, Security Sector Reform, curriculum Development, Ethics, Leadership, Faculty learning and torture.

10. Other business included: Proposals for more professional ties between IAMP members; discussion of membership fees; the creation of think tanks dedicated to special interest groups; dedicated journal to PME; Applying for grants from the EU; Proposal for more links with NATO/PFP project on PME.

11. It was agreed that Victoria will send an email outlining here involvement in NATO/PFP projects in PME and suggest ways in which links can be established with the IAMP.