Table 1
Formal and informal learning.
| QUOTE | INFORMANT |
|---|---|
| “It’s probably more formal then, at least when formal debriefs are taking place and ‘wash-ups’ and stuff like that. Then you enter with a purpose of extracting the essence of your experience from the activity or event.” | Informant 7 |
| “We usually have meetings on Mondays and Fridays. On Mondays we go through what is going to happen during the first week, and on Friday we have a new session where we go through everything that has happened, the positive aspects, and what we should focus on and try to improve.” | Informant 3 |
| “We’re good at technical feedback. … We focus mostly on drill, rehearsal, training, and improvement.” | Informant 1 |
| “Focus on technical aspects is very easy, if you are bad in the drill, you either see it yourself or you get to hear it from your partner.’ | Informant 1 |
| “If there is something we are not happy with, we either let it be known when it happens, or when the mission is finished” and “everyone will be best and perform best. So, we have a really good culture with people who always aim for the top.” | Informant 4 |
Table 2
Arenas for sharing and discussing other than technical and tactical aspects.
| QUOTE | INFORMANT |
|---|---|
| Informant 1’s report may imply the need for something more than just technical/tactical learning processes: “I needed to chat with someone, just to get a confirmation that the things I reacted to are normal to react to … and I think I reimagined more conflicts and situations that I wish I took, or wish I could get rid of…” | Informant 1 |
| “There were a lot of good conversations, after all, and there were opportunities to open up if you had experienced something you thought was bad.” | Informant 3 |
| “The stopovers involved how to get back to normal status, talking about the things that had happened, untying potential mental knots, having a chat with a psychologist, doing medical checks etc. One of the main goals was to clear up ambiguous situations, besides having a nice time and connecting with the team.” | Informant 4 |
| “The stopover is the only time I’ve been in [holistic debrief], and I haven’t participated in it since then.” | Informant 5 |
| “We are familiar with the concept of holistic debrief and that several of them are proficient at it, but that the challenge is to fully exploit the potential of the tool…” “We’re getting more skilled and educated people who have expertise of it, but we need to get it implemented in a good way. That it’s an actual part of our mission solution. That it should not be a purely tactical or technical debrief, but also that the other parts of the holistic debrief need to be implemented, in order to improve. We need to realize this, and it’s being recognized by our command level, but it’s about getting it implemented downwards in the organization.” | Informant 6 |
Table 3
Social aspects of learning.
| QUOTE | INFORMANT |
|---|---|
| “We have a fair share of both managed education and learning, and then you learn a lot in an informal way by talking to people and hearing how other people do it.” When asked when the informal learning processes come to terms, the informant adds: “It can be as simple as in the lunchroom, you meet someone in the hallway, you just take part in some education on shooting. There can be casual processes where you get feedback. For example, this was not very good, or this was really good. A lot happens between these debriefing and learning moments or educational moments that are informal in a way.” | Informant 7 |
| “For me who lives out there and has housing provided by the armed forces, after all, I have no civilian friends out here who don’t work in the armed forces. I don’t know anyone who’s from Ørland who doesn’t work in the armed forces in a way … there’s a lot of job talk.” | Informant 5 |
| “It’s a clear focus on skills and becoming as good as possible. It seems like this permeates most situations. …. There are such high demands on the personnel that they don’t dare speak out about not keeping up and so on. … One should be very conscious about how far one can push a high-performance culture before it turns into a negative culture.” | Informant 7 |
| “I’m going both upwards, downwards, and laterally, really … I might as well ask a team leader about it if there’s something I need to learn or understand. Or go to a conscript driver if I need to learn anything there.” | Informant 7 |
| “I wish we were better at using those who were most recently in an operation when training the new ones.” | Informant 6 |
| “If you don’t nag or put in an effort to go over an experience, then those experiences simply disappear, because there’s no one to gather them and keep them relevant”. | Informant 1 |
Table 4
Last-minute learning.
| QUOTE | INFORMANT |
|---|---|
| “What we learned from NORTAD 2 is quickly forgotten and then it is brought up again when preparing for a new mission.” | Informant 6 |
| “I didn’t experience any focus on learning, really.” | Informant 4 |
| “It probably won’t be looked at before planning the next operation of the same type. Some experience gathered by the group is now being shared, but no focus on learning when we came back, no … no, that’s a closed book.” In addition, several of the informants were asked to contribute to preparations for NORTAD 3 a few weeks before deployment. Informant 1 explains: “It feels like I’m in a department that’s overworked … so extra tasks are added all the time, there are no breaks where we get to wrap up anything … I notice that during the last few weeks before the group heads out, then I get pulled into it … then I feel like, couldn’t we have foreseen this?” | Informant 1 |
| Informant 6 tells us that there are no established routines for transferring experience and knowledge prior to new missions: “The initiative lies with the officer responsible for setting up the detachment … after all, there is someone who simply asks, ‘May we use you?’ … because, as I’ve said, we have a lot else that we need to do. Since we’re not officially assigned to that role, we must consider the request in light of all the other things we need to do. …. It would have been even better if I’d been part of the planning from the start.” | Informant 6 |
| We see an example of this in Informant 1’s statement: “I think the current deployment [NORTAD 3] has been characterized by people who are in positions here at home, and then they are preparing for deployment. That’s what I think has distracted from focusing on their mission, because they haven’t had time to think ahead because they have another position they’re supposed to fill while preparing for the deployment.” | Informant 1 |
Figure 1
Last-minute learning demonstrated as being steered by situational factors.
Figure 2
Conceptual model of ideal, continuous learning.