Positive education of stoic warriors as reflective practitioners in the profession of arms

Abstract

This paper traces connections between Stoicism and Positive Psychology for helping to inform and guide the education of warriors in the Profession of Arms. Peterson and Seligman advocate six core virtues and associated character strengths, which the authors illustrate from the practice of leadership education at the Squadron Officer School and The Air University. A synopsis of Costa and Kallick’s Habits of Mind is introduced to illustrate how awareness of the ways virtue and character strengths can guide the reflective warrior with wisdom and determined action. The authors also highlight insights from the work of Chris Argyris and Donald Schön on double-loop learning, reflective-thinking-in-action, and couple those insights with Dietrich Dörners’ emphasis on the advantages of simulations to offer experimentation by practitioners to better prepare them ‘think of, and then do, the right things at the right times and in the right way.’ Finally, a virtual world learning simulation developed by the authors to support student experimentation with double-loop learning on character strengths and habits of mind is described to illustrate the art-of-the-possible for the positive education of stoic warriors.

Keywords:

• Identity development
• character strengths
• habits of mind
• reflective practice in profession of arms
• stoicism
• military leadership

Notes

1. The reader is referred to Samuel Huntington’s more complete description of the military mind (Huntington, 1985, pp. 59–79).

2. Cited in AETC Vision for Learning Transformation, 28 February 2013, source is AFDD 1–1.

3. Cited from http://www.jcs.mil/Portals/36/Documents/Publications/aprofessionofarms.pdf

4. The ‘Habits of Mind’ for the warfighter is adapted from the work of Costa and Kallick (2000).