Studies for Military Pedagogy, Military Science & Security Policy – serie

The evolving nature of armed conflict, characterized by a new emphasis on crisis management and peace support, is bringing morality to the forefront of military leadership. The challenges of today’s military operations place a new imperative upon Professional Military Education (PME) to maximize the quality of instruction on ethics in terms of both content and effectiveness. This volume presents the refined proceedings of two conferences of the European Forum on Military Pedagogy dealing with ethical issues of teaching and learning in PME. It explores the philosophical and scientific aspects of current ethical questions, as well as the historical, psychological, and technological dimensions of education in ethics. Further attention is given to ethical and educational implications of asymmetric conflict and warfare.

The essays presented in this issue provide an international overview of military-pedagogical thinking and acting. They reflect the sometimes close correspondence between the answers provided by military scholars to questions related to the content and function of military ethics and morale. These answers are so comprehensive as to suggest themselves as a starting point for further deliberations on military pedagogy but also in the fields of other applied pedagogic specialties. The authors who have contributed to this book make it clear, as a group, how the national defence of peace and freedom may be transformed into a pertinent international responsibility and competence for the safeguarding of world peace.

Armed forces need to prepare their military personnel for a global mission profile which requires conflict awareness and the acceptance of personal responsibility along with the ability to successfully cope with the military challenges of their mission. The aim of this publication is to demonstrate the progress in military pedagogy as it is evolving within the various national institutions for the education and training of officers and recruits. This will be helpful in illustrating common topics which, already at present, allow the questioning and exploring of educational ways of thinking as they determine national peculiarities in the training and education of soldiers.