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This training aims to teach officers how to think critically
and to make better decisions on the battlefield. It is not
a general course on logic, decision making, or critical thinking
that just happens to use military examples. The lessons it
teaches are fully embedded in realistic Army contexts and
are motivated by tasks and challenges that arise in that context.
There are no abstract rules that officers must learn and then
figure out how to translate and apply to the military field.
Nevertheless, this training is based on a methodology that
can be applied to any area of decision making, including business.
The training is rooted solidly in theories and research in
a wide variety of fields, including
(i) Normative work in logic and philosophy; rhetoric and
informal logic; and decision theory (see, for example, Non-Monotonic
Probablist; Computational
Models).
(ii) Empirical research on problem solving, creativity,
logical reasoning, and decision making, in addition to work
on causal and story-based knowledge representation (see, for
example, Recognition / Meacognition
model; Mental Models).
References are given in the final section of the training.
They include CTI's own work on mental models and on reflective
processes that critique and correct mental models.
This training was enthusiastically reviewed by the dean of
the Command and General Staff College, the Director of the
Center for Army Tactics, and by several instructors. This
training was utilized in the spring of 1999 in a CGSC course
on advanced tactics.
As a result of this work, CTI was awarded the US Army Small
Business Innovation Research Program 1999 SBIR Phase II Quality
Award, one of only five for the year 1999.
See also:
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