Hubert Annen Livres

Military pedagogical research and teaching has made headways. There is still no internationally accepted unified field theory, but the diversity and heterogeneity of military pedagogy reflects the complexity of modern military tasks and enables the scientific debate on military ethics and morale, military education and interculturality. While political and educational developments have caught up with some of the topics addressed, changes in the military and the political and educational landscape will always necessitate this branch of academia to continuously adapt to the needs of the armed forces and their servicemen and -women. Insofar, the diverse contributions in this volume offer valuable insights into current military pedagogical thinking and acting.

The essays presented in this issue provide an international overview of military-pedagogical thinking and acting. They reflect the sometimes close correspondence between the answers provided by military scholars to questions related to the content and function of military ethics and morale. These answers are so comprehensive as to suggest themselves as a starting point for further deliberations on military pedagogy but also in the fields of other applied pedagogic specialties. The authors who have contributed to this book make it clear, as a group, how the national defence of peace and freedom may be transformed into a pertinent international responsibility and competence for the safeguarding of world peace.

Armed forces need to prepare their military personnel for a global mission profile which requires conflict awareness and the acceptance of personal responsibility along with the ability to successfully cope with the military challenges of their mission. The aim of this publication is to demonstrate the progress in military pedagogy as it is evolving within the various national institutions for the education and training of officers and recruits. This will be helpful in illustrating common topics which, already at present, allow the questioning and exploring of educational ways of thinking as they determine national peculiarities in the training and education of soldiers.