The identity of military officers graduating from the national service academies: The process of creating military leadership

Abstract

The study “The identity of military officers graduating from the national service academies : The process of creating military leadership” is a qualitative research with 2 objectives which are : 1) to study the educational management of the pre cadet school and the national service academies, in terms of developing the leadership indentity of the cadets. 2) to study the process of creating military leadership of the pre cadet school and the national service academies. This research is conducted by using the methodology of qualitative research which consisted of a topic-related literature reviews and in-depth interviews. The interviewee was selected from personnel of pre cadet school and the national service academies. Each institution consists of 2 teachers, 2 officer staffs, and 2 military students so there are 24 key informants in this study. The study finds that the pre cadet school and the national service academies have similar teaching and learning systems, which focus on creating leadership, consists of 3 parts : academic part, military science part, and creating leadership identity part. This whole process leads to creating identity of military students. The result found that there are 2 groups of identity: common identity and specific identity. Firstly, common identity is an overall characteristic that is unique to military students. The process of creating common identity begins with the training in pre cadet school such as process of creating personality, discipline, seniority, unity and academic, so those who graduated from the pre cadet school would have a similar identity. Secondly, specific identity is unique characteristics of the cadets in each army though their instructional system. Each institution has different training system that originate the unique characteristics so specific identity could identify the cadet’s characteristics of each army: The army cadet have strong identities for leadership and patience. The specific identities of the air force cadet are erudite, punctual and good personality. The navy cadet are outstanding in expert for their career part and thorough person.