Security elites in the classroom: intersections between andragogical principles and the learning preferences of global security leaders

Education is broadly acknowledged to be crucial for confronting and mitigating emergent global crises. Government-run strategic-level security and defence courses (SSDCs) are a key mechanism for achieving this, as they provide strategic thinking skills to hand-picked cohorts of security elites. However, scholarly research on SSDCs is both scarce and heavily skewed towards staff perspectives. This article mitigates and redresses deficiencies in scholarly and practitioner literature on the professional education of security elites. It achieves this by contrasting perspectives from existing literature with perspectives of students themselves, gained from an online survey of 753 alumni across thirty-four SSDCs, which asked: ‘What do you believe are the three most important requirements for a successful teaching and learning environment at the “senior defence college” level?’ It provides an empirical validation of the degree to which conclusions within practitioner-led SSDC scholarship and wider andragogical scholarship align with the educational preferences of security elites. The findings highlight the potential importance of high-quality human resources, contingent constructivist pedagogies, relevant content, a learning environment that encourages freedom of expression and diversity of perspective, suitable academic resources and support mechanisms, and appropriate motivational incentives.