Teaching Leadership

For my EDUC 2410 “The Art of Teaching” class, I was required to write a paper and give a presentation on a topic of my choice related to education. I chose to relate my experience from Air Force ROTC to the class by doing a paper on teaching leadership—experiential exercises in particular.

Background

Experiential exercises in education are simulation activities designed for learning… something. Video games, role-playing scenarios, and puzzles may all count as experiential exercises.

Experiential exercises are popular in teaching leadership because for several reasons:

• It allows students to practice scenarios where it otherwise may be impractical (costly, not timely, unsafe, too complex, inconvenient)
• Leadership development generally desires for students to be able to act as leaders rather than simply know about leadership
• It’s fun!

Kolb’s Experiential Learning Cycle

David Kolb’s (literally) 1984 book “Experiential Learning: Experience As The Source Of Learning And Development” proposes experiential learning as a cycle of four elements

1. Concrete Experience: students do an activity
2. Reflective Observation: students interpret their experience
3. Abstract Conceptualization: students form models and ideas
4. Active Experimentation: students test the validity of their models and ideas

Experiential Exercises in Air Force ROTC

The Holm Center’s motto is quite straightforward: “We build leaders.”

Each week, Air Force ROTC detachments run a two-hour Leadership Lab (LLAB) with the purpose of teaching military customs like drill and supposedly developing leadership abilities. Often, they will run Group Leadership Projects (GLPs) which are experiential exercises to improve leadership skills.