Opinion Piece: Breaking Good: Capitalising on the JPME Reforms through Creative Practice

There is a difference between requiring an individual or a team to think creatively about a problem and allowing an individual or team to use creativity to solve a problem. The former is as useful as telling someone to innovate without providing them with a licence to fail; the latter enables them to apply the resources available in novel ways to achieve the mission. Creativity is a process, not an output. The recent reforms in joint professional military education (JPME), begun under the Ryan Review in 2016, list creative thinking and the use of creativity as key outputs; however, none of the framework documents or practitioner guides identify the need to engage in a creative practice during education and training to achieve this. The Army and, more broadly, the Australian Defence Force (ADF) has the opportunity to ‘break good’ by embracing the integration of creative practices within its training and education frameworks.

The Ryan Review identified areas for improvement in training and education in 2016. It also provided a roadmap on how the Army could begin to address the identified shortfalls. This initial step by a single service has gained momentum, and now, just over four years later, the broader Defence organisation has had a renaissance in the way it views individual and collective JPME. It is undeniable that the last four years have been good for the development of the service members and public servants who are the beneficiaries of the new training and education frameworks. However, as Anthony Brandt and David Eagleman have argued, some of the best innovations our species has had come from a time when people weren’t content and decided to break good to pursue excellence.¹ I believe that now is the time to build upon the revolution in professional military education (PME) and break good by incorporating something the majority of our conservative organisation may find uncomfortable: creative practice. However, before I explore the concept of breaking good with creative practice, it is essential to understand how Defence articulates its position on the education of its personnel, particularly how it intends to achieve the stated aims within its JPME frameworks.

The Ryan Review, led by the Director-General Training and Doctrine, then Brigadier Mick Ryan, began with a historic overview of Army education, training and doctrine over the period covering the post-Vietnam era to 2016, and finished with a list of recommendations for implementing the changes needed to modernise the education, training and doctrine practices of the Army. It also mentions the word ‘creative’ five separate times. Three of these references are to creative thinking,² one is for creative work³ and the other refers to applying creative methods to how the Army trains its people.⁴ Those references that focus on creative thinking and problem-solving assume that creativity is an output of the education; however, the Ryan Review does not address how the output of creativity will be developed throughout the training continuum.

The other two references refer to creative processes or engagement (work) but again do not identify how creativity will be developed or measured. It is worth noting that some of the sections of the Ryan Review discuss methods of education that may be interpreted as employing creativity, such as gamification; however, as I will argue, often the creative process of learning models such as gamification has been concluded before the students engage with the material. The creation of the game is a more effective creative practice that will develop a student’s creative thinking, not participation in a predefined game with limited opportunities for creative expression. It is essential to note that the Ryan Review was a strategic review that provided recommendations; the next stage would be to produce a strategy to implement the identified recommendations and ensure the revised education frameworks achieved the goal of developing creative and critical thinkers for the Army.

In 2017 a paper titled Evolving an Intellectual Edge was released to provide a clear strategy for PME in the Australian Army. This document applies the common ‘ends, ways, and means’ strategic framework for developing objectives, methods and resources to implement the changes identified in the Ryan Review. The ‘Intellectual Edge’ PME strategy is a short, pithy document that provides a methodology for developing key professional development initiatives within the Army. It also provides metrics for measuring the development, progress and results of professional development programs. In terms of strategic documents, Evolving an Intellectual Edge provides both a clear raison d’être for professional development and a strategy for improving PME across the Army. Notably, it also mentions the term ‘creative’, only once and specifically about the combination of the knowledge gained through professional development.⁵ The focus on creative thinking, emphasised throughout the Ryan Review, is missing from the implementation strategy. It is also missing from the operational and tactical documents that were developed to support the implementation of the Ryan Review recommendations.

Land Warfare Procedures—General 7-1-2 (LWP-G 7-1-2): The Instructor’s Handbook is a training, rather than education, focused publication designed to provide Army instructors with a necessary reference to understand, design, and deliver military training. The Instructor’s Handbook provides an excellent overview of the military training environment. It provides a repository of suitable instructional techniques, enabling the Army instructor to avoid stagnation through a lack of variety in content delivery. The term ‘creative’ is used, again, to emphasise a skill required—this time of the instructor. This is the only reference to ‘creative’ within the document; however, following on from the use of gamification in the Ryan Review, The Instructor’s Handbook does provide alternative instruction delivery models that, at first glance, appear to incorporate creative practices. These delivery models include role play and playlets and, for a conservative organisation such as the Army, seem to take a creative approach to training and education content delivery.⁶

These techniques, however, are not designed as a creative practice or a process to foster creativity. Much like the use of games, they are designed to reinforce other modes of content delivery and add to the experiential learning models favoured by militaries. The Instructor’s Handbook, much like the Army online learning portal The Cove, is an example of the positive changes and significant investment the Australian Army made in developing its personnel through a PME strategy. The Ryan Review and the subsequent policy changes in the Army paved the way for the ADF, and broader Defence Enterprise, to build a JPME program that met the needs of a broader workforce.

Major General Mick Ryan, now as the Commander of the Australian Defence College, has spearheaded the ADF and Defence organisation education and training reform. This has led to several key documents that provide a strategic framework for meeting the training and education requirements of the future Defence environments. These strategic frameworks also have a focus on creativity and creative thought and, like their Army counterparts, fail to provide a model that incorporates creative practices into the education process. Instead, they repeat the focus on creativity as an output of the education process.

The Defence Enterprise Learning Strategy 2035, released in 2020, provides an overview of the strategic direction, strategic objectives, resourcing, and responsibilities for ensuring that the training and education programs within the Defence Enterprise are fit for purpose in meeting Australia’s future strategic challenges. Much like its Army predecessors, the Defence Enterprise Learning Strategy focuses on developing an intellectual edge through high-quality training and education.⁷ However, unlike the Ryan Review, the intellectual edge outlined in the Defence Enterprise Learning Strategy doesn’t include creative thinking and problem-solving as a key output of the education process. This is not surprising, however, because this document sets the overall scene, allowing for the details on implementation to be covered in associated operational documents such as The Australian Joint Professional Military Education Continuum (JPME Continuum).

The JPME Continuum outlines how the ADF and Defence Enterprise will develop the intellectual edge through its training and education framework. The JPME Continuum mentions creativity concerning thinking, problem-solving, and education delivery eight times.⁸ All eight refer to creativity as a critical output of the learning process, rather than the use of creative practices as part of the learning process. In this way, the JPME Continuum echoes its Army predecessors and is further reinforced by publications authored by Major General Ryan.⁹ It is clear, from the Ryan Review through to the JPME Continuum, that creativity is valued as a vital component of the intellectual edge that will help the ADF and Defence Enterprise. It is also clear that Defence views creativity as an output and, as such, has no current model for incorporating creative practices into its training and education delivery models.

The JPME revolution begun in Army and carried through to the wider ADF and Defence Enterprise has been successful primarily because it has sought to directly address shortfalls in the training and learning models that need to prepare the organisation for future strategic challenges. None of the policy documents dwell on definitions; in fact, the majority of the documents are written in clear, straightforward language to avoid the jargon that is a hallmark of military doctrine. However, the lack of a definition of the terms ‘creative’ and ‘creativity’ in this case lead to a misconception of the value of creativity in developing the intellectual edge. Specifically, creativity has more value as a learning process to develop an intellectual edge in the members of the ADF and Defence Enterprise. This is counter to the use of the term as an output of the learning process in the training and education documents discussed above. It is time for the ADF and Defence Enterprise to break good—reposition creativity as a crucial part of the learning process, rather than an output. First, however, a definition of creativity is required.

Defining a term as common as ‘creativity’ can be challenging, especially when attempting to place it in a specific context outside of its regular use. The two Macquarie Dictionary definitions of creativity are not helpful for our purpose. The first states that creativity is ‘the state or quality of being creative’ and the second is less helpful, stating that creativity is ‘creative ability’.¹⁰ Macquarie’s definitions of creative, ‘having the quality or power of creating’ and ‘resulting from originality of thought or expression’, are more helpful, but still come up short concerning the training and education of Defence personnel.

Sir Ken Robinson explores many definitions of creativity in the context of education in his book Out of Our Minds. He offers a definition that applies to the use of creativity in the learning models of the ADF and Defence Enterprise. The definition put forward by Robinson states that creativity is ‘the process of having original ideas that have value’,¹¹ and he goes on to emphasise the critical elements of ‘original’, ‘value’ and ‘process’. Creativity, Robinson continues, ‘is a process more often than it is an event’.¹² This distinction, or rather gradation, is essential. The determination of creativity as an output of the training and education reforms of the ADF and Defence is not incorrect; however, it is not as useful for learning as the view of creativity as a process. The incorporation of creativity in the learning process through the introduction of creative practices can break good on the current JPME reforms and develop the thinking the intellectual edge will demand of future members of the Defence Enterprise.

The term ‘creative practice’, much like the terms ‘creative’ and ‘creativity’, has a multitude of definitions that are often specific to the field in which they are being discussed. One key point, however, is that creative practice does not necessarily refer to the introduction of artistic applications for aesthetic purposes. Creative practices are focused on the discovery of knowledge and learning for education and application in other fields. A useful corollary is the application of other academic fields, such as maths or history, to achieve tangible outcomes. Creative practice is, in essence, a process of applied creativity to achieve a substantial learning or research outcome. The use of creative practices is not new to the ADF or Defence Enterprise; however, it is not an often used, or understood, model in the training and education institutions and workforce across Defence.

Two recent, and similar, examples of creative practice use within the Defence Enterprise are the science fiction writing competition run on the Australian Defence College’s JPME web portal, The Forge, and the ADF’s Robotics and Autonomous Systems 2040 creative writing for capability development competition.¹³ Both of these are examples of engaging in a process to generate value through original ideas. It is unlikely that pre-2016 a creative writing competition would have been conducted to inform the development of future capabilities being explored by a branch of the Joint Capabilities Group. This positive development can be exploited further by incorporating other forms of creative practice across the JPME Continuum. Another critical element of a creative practice is ensuring those engaging in the creative process are provided boundaries within which to be creative and mentorship to guide them through the creating process. The introduction of limits and mentorship is essential in ensuring the creative practice is of value to the participants.

The final example of creative practice for training and education is an activity that I ran as part of the recent Logistics Officer Basic Course at the Army School of Logistics Operations. The program was designed as an eight-week course that centred around students developing a single sentence which defined war. Each week students participated in an hour-long workshop that introduced a new topic on the theory of war and participated in a discussion during the workshop and in an online classroom on their draft definitions. After the eight weeks, the students presented their final definition to the class. This is an example of a limited out, a single sentence, creative practice program that can increase the learning outcomes of an established Defence training and education program. By focusing on the creative process to deliver a small, manageable creative output, the students engaged in theoretical material that would generally be delivered less engagingly. The delivery of this program was not resource intensive, using tools already in use on the course and requiring a minimum of one hour of engagement with the students each week.

Creativity is more often a process than an output. The inclusion of creativity as an output in the learning frameworks of the ADF and Defence Enterprise highlights the importance Defence leadership places on the role creativity plays in developing the intellectual edge. Unfortunately these frameworks don’t provide a methodology for achieving creativity as an output. By incorporating creative practices and reframing creativity as a process within the learning models, the ADF and Defence Enterprise can provide the workforce with the intellectual edge needed to meet the strategic challenges of the future.

Endnotes

1 A Brandt and D Eagleman, 2017, The Runaway Species (Edinburgh: Canongate Books), 144.

2 Brigadier Mick Ryan, 2016, The Ryan Review: A Study of Army’s Education, Training and Doctrine Needs for the Future (Canberra: Commonwealth of Australia), 52, 53, 123.

3 Ibid., 50.

4 Ibid., 27.

5 Australian Army, 2017, Evolving an Intellectual Edge: Professional Military Education for the Australian Army (Canberra: Commonwealth of Australia), 4.

6 Australian Army, 2017, Land Warfare Procedures—General 7-1-2: The Instructor’s Handbook (Canberra: Commonwealth of Australia), 141, 143.

7 Department of Defence, 2017, Defence Enterprise Learning Strategy 2035 (Canberra: Commonwealth of Australia), 11.

8 Department of Defence, 2020, The Australian Joint Professional Military Education Continuum (Canberra: Commonwealth of Australia), 16, 18, 22, 25, 37, 50, 57, 60.

9 M Ryan, 2019, An Australian Intellectual Edge for Conflict and Competition in the 21st Century, Centre of Gravity Series Paper 58 (Canberra: Australian National University), 4, 10; M Ryan, 2020, ‘The Intellectual Edge: A Competitive Framework for Future War and Strategic Competition’, Joint Forces Quarterly 96: 7.

10 Macquarie Dictionary iOS application, accessed 30 August 2020.

11 K Robinson, 2017, Out of Our Minds (Chichester: Capstone), 129.

12 Ibid., 129.

13 Australian Defence College, ‘ADC Sci-Fi Writing Competition 2020’, The Forge, accessed 30 August 2020, at: https://theforge.defence.gov.au/adc-sci-fi-writing-competition-2020; The Central Blue, ‘Call for Submissions: Robotics and Autonomous Systems 2040’, accessed 30 August 2020, at: http://centralblue.williamsfoundation.org.au/call-for-submissions-robot…