By SCOTT KRAUT
Regardless of where you hang your turnout gear, the fire service is constantly facing challenges, from budget cuts and new technology to a consistent decline in basic firefighting skills. Unfortunately, the time has come when all who fought fires in the 1970s (“The War Years”)—when fire duty was at its peak—have left or are leaving our departments. As a direct result of decreased fire duty, a need for other specialized training, and inexperience, our reliance on training to increase our firefighting skill set is paramount.
For many years, fire service training has been dictated or structured by a textbook that taught the basics of firefighting to those who entered the profession (as volunteer or career members) without prior experience. After graduating recruit school or obtaining Firefighter I or II certification, firefighters may have been trained or required to show competency using the same standard evolutions that they were initially instructed to complete. To broaden their skill set or to improve on the basic techniques, firefighters relied on tenured peers to mentor and provide them with more advanced training; hopefully, they would learn from personal mistakes and the mistakes of others on the fireground.
However, to ensure that a training program is consistent and trains our members to an advanced level, we must also train our instructors to effectively teach and structure a program around the needs of the department and its subject matter experts (SMEs) as well as focus on developing future SMEs as instructors.
At some point in your fire service career, you will be asked or told to instruct a group of people on a given topic. This may be as simple as talking to a group of children about fire safety or as complex as training the entire department on the most recently purchased self-contained breathing apparatus. For some members, this may progress from one to the other; for others, talking to the children is where it will end. If you wish to continue public speaking or training, you must pay attention to some techniques and theories as you transition from the kindergarten class to the auditorium.
A complete training program is made up of many variables, but one that is often overlooked is the methodology of instructing, or “how we teach.” To completely understand what that means, you have to start with your audience. Whether you are discussing formal or informal training, instructing or teaching, mentoring or facilitating, there are direct similarities as well as significant differences in all forms or methods of “training.” The question you need to answer is, “What are you trying to teach your peers, and what fits this particular audience?” When discussing training, your firefighters are adult learners with some level of experience who are trying to achieve mastery in a given field of expertise. That may be fighting fires, administering emergency medical treatment, performing technical rescue, or any other discipline for which they are responsible as a department.
Your audience may be a group of chief officers seeking to increase their incident command system knowledge, a select group of line officers broadening their understanding of scene size-up, or company drills that are focused on stretching lines. To maintain credibility, match your instructor or SME to the audience and the topic. For example, it will be a bit awkward to have a firefighter teaching a group of chief officers. Although this may at times go against conventional wisdom, it will pay dividends in the long run. This is exactly why the fire service has a tendency to reach out to training companies or those on the lecture circuit to train its members on a given topic. Regardless of the target audience, that group will always have a varying degree of experience.
That being said, your overall goal must be to deliver the material in such a manner that it keeps the interest of those with a high level of experience without losing those with a lower experience level. Often, this can be done prior to delivering the course with short questionnaires that go along with the sign-up method or simply by suggesting the course be attended by those at a certain level in their rank structure (assuming they have some prerequisites). Once you size up your audience, you are ready to begin implementing the methodology of teaching.
When dealing with adult learning, you must tailor your techniques to what has been referred to as “andragogy.” Adults are motivated by a desire to solve immediate problems in their lives; they will typically seek knowledge to fulfill a deficit in their “resumé,” and it must be functional. Malcolm Knowles, a professor at Boston University, first used the term “andragogy” to describe what he felt was the other end of the spectrum from traditional child education. In his book The Modern Practice of Adult Education: Andragogy versus Pedagogy,1 Knowles described the modern practice of adult education as being from two ends of the spectrum and nondichotomous; learners may fall somewhere between the two methods—teaching children = pedagogy/teaching adults = andragogy—thus creating a challenge for instructors to determine where in this scale their students fit. Knowles did, however, provide a model that can be used to understand a learner’s ability, need, and desire to take responsibility for learning. It is predicated on four basic assumptions, which follow.
Assumption #1: An adult learner’s self-concept moves from dependency to independency or self-directedness. Although a child relies on an instructor to deliver the content and regurgitation as a measure of understanding, the adult relies on a facilitator to direct the discussion of content learned (typically through study) in a manner that the learner can apply with successful results. That’s not to say that the facilitator isn’t going to teach content, but he will, through various means, orchestrate the way in which the content is covered, using the adult learner’s life experience to do so.
In the fire service, firefighters can accomplish this by limiting their lecture time and incorporating the content delivery into practical application. Instead of spending two hours in the classroom discussing the history and working parts of the halligan, take that information to your forcible entry prop and interject the information while focusing on precise tactical application of the tool.
Assumption #2: Adults accumulate a reservoir of experiences that can be used as a basis on which to build learning. This may be the hardest adaptation for the instructor, who typically likes to teach “best practices.” However, when instructing adults on a given topic, he may endanger the whole process by explaining his method as the “right” or “best” way of doing things. To achieve buy-in from your members, determine what has worked for them in the past and then offer your “best practices” in the form of an addition or tweaking to their already successful method to achieve mastery.
By using the forcible entry training example, there are obvious specific methods that must be taught for safety reasons or simply because physics is at work, but demonstrating ways in which a halligan can be handled by one person on an inward-opening door will generate an entirely new interest in the methods.
Assumption #3: The adult learner’s readiness to learn becomes increasingly associated with the developmental tasks of social roles. In the fire service, this can be synonymous with promotions, special assignments, new and better technology, or a stagnation of someone’s current role. In theory, this notion provides you with a class of participants eager to learn. However, when teaching a mandated course, your role as an instructor must quickly convert to facilitator to motivate students. To take advantage of this concept, as an instructor, attempt to consistently motivate the students to take on new roles as well as achieve a working knowledge of the role of their immediate supervisor.
Assumption #4: The student’s time and curricular perspectives change from postponed to immediacy of application and from subject-centeredness to performance-centeredness. In other words, you must be more direct in your methods.
The adult learner isn’t interested in sitting through a semester-long course to hone his search technique, and he’s not as interested in the history or tradition of the primary search (he’s already digested that); instead, he wants to enhance his performance. Quick tips, new techniques, and different methods of teaching search will give the student immediate satisfaction and take the emphasis away from why we search or where victims may be located to the student’s asking, “How am I performing” given the information he has learned in the past.
Taking all of this into consideration leads you to what will be the beginning of a well-structured training program that begins with understanding how to teach adult learners, what is the best environment for the students, and how to effectively get the point across (teach the subject). Taking the time to structure your program, choose your topics wisely, and carefully select the instructors will pay dividends on the fireground; believe it or not, your methods will be infectious, creating a class of eager and ready attendees who will carry the message forward and possibly become instructors themselves. This punctuates the importance of choosing your instructors wisely or as an instructor limiting yourself to a few topics that you teach well.
A solid quality assurance program must be created to maintain the effectiveness of the instructors and content throughout. The instructor for any given topic must be a SME in that area to ensure the credibility of the entire training program. At times, this may mean sacrificing some of credentials usually associated with an “approved” or “certified” instructor to get the best experience-based instructor for the particular topic, realizing, however, that some courses will need the oversight or pairing of a “certified” instructor based on the accrediting body.
Make sure the instructor captures the mind of the adult learners quickly; keeps them interested; and, in short order, relates the training experience to their everyday duties. Finally, allow the students to apply the instruction in a practical manner in which they can, in turn, introduce their own experiences. At this point, you will begin to see learning take place among the students; they will begin to train one another, and those life experiences will become intertwined.
There are many obstacles to overcome when trying to change the way you do business within your department’s training arena. Some of them are tangible, and some are based on theory. The recipe for a successful training program continues to break down the logistics, budgeting, and maintenance of the final product.
Endnote
1. Knowles, MS. The Modern Practice of Adult Education: Andragogy versus Pedagogy. Association Press (1970).
SCOTT KRAUT is a lieutenant on Fairfax County (VA) Fire Department Tower Ladder 40; he previously was in charge of training the department’s 1,400 field personnel. He has also been a fire service instructor since 2004. Kraut is a graduate of the West Point leadership program. He is also a senior instructor for Traditions Training LLC and an instructor at the Fire Department Instructors Conference.
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