Dr.Hab., Professor V.V. Mironov¹
Dr.Hab., Professor V.L. Pashuta¹
Military Institute of Physical Culture, St. Petersburg

Keywords: management and practical skills, military service personnel physical training, practical skills building logics.

Background. Physical training as a term may be defined as the complex multisided process of persistent physical progress of the military and special service personnel designed to build up special competences, physical qualities, applied combat skills and practical situation control abilities with the individual accumulated multifunctional resource being effectively employed to successfully fulfil every professional mission, accept a healthy lifestyle and secure due professional longevity.

Physical training process may also be described as a complex social function with the relevant conceptual logics, military personnel physical improvement process and its efficient management geared to attain due physical fitness for combat missions and other related tasks within their formal assignments. The physical training system, however, may be highly operable and efficient only when managed well by the duly trained and competent managers at every system level.

Objective of the study was to theoretically substantiate, develop and test a system of practical algorithmic and semi-algorithmic problem-solving assignments to improve the practical management skills in managers at every system level.

Structure of the study. The new service management training system has been implemented at the relevant educational establishments including military colleges, institutes, Military Physical Education Institute and military academies for as long as 30 years (1980 to 2010), with over 7 thousand servicemen being subject to the training and studies for the period.

Graduates of the relevant military education establishments and services must meet the relevant requirements as provided by the Commander in Chief directives; Ministry of Defence orders and directives; management and practical instructions of the commanders in chief of special armed forces; senior officers’ orders and instructions; service regulations, instructions, combat education plans, programs and other education process regulating documents. Analyses of the military service practices, however, show that some graduates upon arrival to the troops are still unable to establish constructive interpersonal relationship with subordinates; manage the service strictly as required by the service regulations; efficiently control and manage the service regulation learning process, field drills and physical trainings; and demonstrate high standards in their service duties.

In the present situation of the democratic values and publicity being promoted in our society, the Armed Forces take efforts to revise their standards and requirements to the ideological, political and ethical culture of graduate officers, their military service competency on the whole and their educational culture in particular in terms of the practical mastery in combat training and education of their subordinates. The key reason for the still stalled progress in the academic education and cultural process is that the academic curriculum is not always fully harmonised with the modern military theory and practices; with the education methodology still dominated by the out-dated monologue-based education models that provide no room for a creative interaction of the trainees; achievements of modern pedagogics, psychology and information technologies are still insufficiently applied; and the requirements to the acquired competences and skills of the cadets and trainees are still not high and strict enough.

The pedagogical function refers to the specialist training quality including, in addition to the general and special knowledge base, the educational mastery that each sergeant and officer must develop and apply. Upon completion of a higher education establishment, each graduate officer must demonstrate certain competences, skills and abilities to effectively manage the subordinates and plan, organise, provide for and manage, among other things, the physical training process in the subordinate military unit.

The practical educational skills viewed as the individually acquired and developed responses and actions imply a variety of complex intellectual, sensor and motor activities. It may be beneficial to classify the educational skills by specific physical improvement domains in the following groups: team control, practical, management (planning, instruction, accounting and control) and education skills: see Figure 1.

Figure 1. Skills structure in the professional military activity

It was in the 1980-90ies that a series of educational process experiments was completed in a few military regions with above 1000 servicemen participating in them. The experiments were designed to train the practical commanding skills in cadets for appointments to the vacant positions of unit commanders. It should be noted that only 5 academic hours were scheduled in the education course for practical training; and no wonder that the experiments failed to build up sound education skills in the trainees to be able to run the education and physical training sessions. We tried to intensify the education process via special training programs with a special emphasis on the practical education skills, with the programs including 7-9 standard programmable education sessions.

Each assignment in the training programs was designed as a piece/ portion/ frame of the education material ready to learn by the trainees immediately after its demonstration; and this format made it possible to efficiently control the practical commanding skills and abilities building process skipping the “trial and error” phase. Each piece of information was designed to model the most common basic elements of every educational or physical training session in every physical training category (hand-to-hand fight, obstacle runs, ski training etc.) i.e. the sessions were designed as required by the relevant generalisation theory [10, 7, 11]. The assignments were specified by certain algorithms (i.e. brief descriptions) and rated by the relevant difficulty levels ranging from 1 to 3 points. As a result, an individual academic progress rate for the practical commanding course could reach 20 provisional points, with the assignments fulfilled in the preparatory or main parts of education sessions or during physical training sessions. The final obligatory examinations showed the training programs being high efficient. Average progress rates of the education units subject to experiment with classification by the assignments after the 5-month education experiment are given in Table 1 hereunder. Significance rate of the differences of the initial versus final data arrays was P≤ 1.

Table 1. Progress rates of the practical commanding skills (in points) of Experimental Group versus Reference Group for the experimental period, averaged for the educational units

At the same time, in the period of 1985-2000, we completed a series of educational experiments at a few military colleges/ institutes with about 4 thousand cadets being subject to the studies. It should be noted that graduates of military colleges must, in addition to regular competences, be competent in managing the education and physical training sessions in every physical education category; draft education plans; run accounts and progress tests to rate physical fitness of their subordinates and make adjustments to the physical training process in the units.

In addition to the 7-9 standard assignments of the training program, they had to fulfil 4-5 new practical semi-algorithmic tasks. The experiments in different higher education establishments varied in time from 1 to 4-5 years. Data revealed in the correlation analysis were found corresponding to those generated in the factorial analysis. Upon completion of the multiple educational experiments, we found significant progress in the practical commanding skills of Experimental Groups versus Reference Group. The EG progress data were further substantiated by the positive references from the armed forces upon the practical military probations and following the first service year of the graduates in the troops [11].

Conclusion. The series of long-term educational experiments made it possible to design the practical management and educational skills and abilities building program applicable to different classes of military personnel, as follows: the skills-building process must be designed in a phased manner; the education material must be generalised to help master the educational skills; educational actions need to be duly programmed; dynamic structure of the skills building process must be improved by the relevant educational techniques; micro-stages of the education process are recommended to be designed on a cycled basis; the skills building process must be phased in two ways: as dictated by the difficulty level or positional responsibilities; educational skills and abilities must be applied as a multilevel process management system; the relevant dynamic informational units need to be offered in reasonably large portions when complex skills are being formed; mass education needs to be duly individualised for success; and in the education process a due priority must be given to sustainability, dependability, flexibility and variability of the learning process to customise it to the variable process conditions.

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Corresponding author: fizkult@teoriya.ru

Abstract

The article gives grounds for management and practical skills building in the military personnel physical training system managers. The management and practical skills building process is rather specific and may be described as having a hierarchical structure including assistant managers of the training sessions (assistant commanders, sergeants) and top managers of the courses (commanders) having non-special physical education. The other positions in the management system include physical training instructors having higher or secondary sports education and relevant physical training skills and physical education course heads having higher military special backgrounds, graduates of Military Institute of Physical Culture. The training system has been practically tested at the relevant education establishments, military colleges/ institutes, Military Institute of Physical Culture and military academies for 30 years (1980 to 2010), with over 7 thousand servicemen being subject to the practical tests. The series of long-term educational experiments made it possible to develop the core logics of the management and practical skills building in military service personnel of different ranks.