revistaieee7

Juan Antonio Martínez Sánchez
Thoughts on military education and training in Spain
of competence. 22 The introduction of this concept into higher military education was
new for most military instructors and gave rise to quite a few difficulties that are being
overcome with time. As concepts such as basic, general, cross-disciplinary and specific
skills were unheard of up to this point, there was initial difficulty in drawing up the
first curricula for general and specific military education in general academies, as well
as identifying suitable candidates for these courses.
Another difficulty that arose following the introduction of the new military higher
education model and the skills approach was the need to amend the goals and content
of the curricula, adjust the role and functions of the instructor and, consequently,
change the learning strategies.
Prior to the advent of the EHEA, university curricula typically included several subjects
(given over a term) and were often criticised for being excessively long and disjointed, in
most cases leading to programmes comprised of numerous subjects that there was barely
enough time to cover during the course or term and preventing students from getting a
general understanding of the very diverse content of a particular subject. However, the new
higher education model is based more on the mastery of a number of general and specific
skills within each subject and less on the mere acquisition of in-depth academic knowledge.
Consequently, it became necessary to reduce the content of academic curricula and
integrate them into a series of interdisciplinary and interconnected modules. 23
In addition, with the EU reform of higher education, the teacher has ceased to
play the role of a transmitter of content and knowledge and has instead become a
tutor or mentor for the acquisition of skills by students in a proactive and relatively
autonomous way. From this perspective, it is not about presenting fully developed
academic content to students, but for students to obtain information from different
sources and transform this into the knowledge needed to resolve problems, with the
process including different skills and abilities (analysis, synthesis, critical assessment,
design, etc.). The aim, therefore, is for students to acquire and build up genuine and
valuable knowledge that can then be applied to different scenarios and complex, new
and uncertain situations. 24
22 Ibid. Readers interested in learning more about the skills that students of general military academies
have to acquire can consult, on the one hand, the curricula of military training courses for officers of
land, sea and air forces approved by the respective chiefs of defence staff and, on the other hand, the
evaluations of degree proposals approved by the National Agency for Quality Assessment and Accreditation
of Spain (ANECA). By way of example, the Engineering Degree course taught at the CUD of the
Escuela Naval Militar in Marín provides for the acquisition of 5 basic skills (CB), 12 general skills (CG),
21 cross-disciplinary skills (CT) and up to 51 specific skills (CE). See: UNIVERSIDAD DE VIGO:
Memoria de solicitud de verificación del título de grado en Ingeniería Mecánica, 5 de marzo de 2012, pp.
6-8, http://cud.uvigo.es/images/Documentacion/memoriafinalmecanica.pdf [last visited: 23.10.2015].
23 LÓPEZ RUIZ, Juan I.: “Un giro copernicano en la enseñanza universitaria: formación por competencias”,
op. cit., pp. 289-291.
24 Ibid. p. 293.
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