Book Description

The U.S. Army Research Institute for the Behavioral and Social Sciences developed instruction on thinking, reasoning, and decision making at the request of the Training and Doctrine Command and the Command and General Staff School. The instruction went beyond current educational and training practices. Practical thinking refers to the cognitive skills that are met in creative and critical thinking. Emerging cognitive theories that emphasize how people naturally make decisions served as the basis for identifying the desired skills. The lessons that were developed addressed how attitudes influence thinking, techniques for taking different perspectives, how to speculate about assumptions, practical guidelines for reasoning, and how to form encompassing views. The lessons were included as part of a course on Battle Command. Seventy-three students participated in 12 hours of classes. At the end of the course a sample of them reported an increase in their expertise in all six of the lessons. The notable accomplishment was the application of a cognitive approach to job-specific material for battle command and the experimental Mobile Strike Force. Five directions are suggested for further exploration of the concepts.