Wiley Handbook of Science and Technology for Homeland Security, 4 Volume Set

TRAINING AND LEARNING DEVELOPMENT FOR HOMELAND SECURITY

EDUARDO SALAS AND ELIZABETH H. LAZZARA

University of Central Florida, Orlando, Florida

1 INTRODUCTION

On December 22, 2001, Richard Colvin Reid hid explosives in his shoes in an effort to destroy American Airlines Flight 63 bound to the United States from Paris (BBC News 2008) [1]. His attempt was ultimately unsuccessful because other passengers were able to resolve the situation; however, the world would come to know this man as the “shoe bomber”. This incident marked a drastic change in the policies and procedures for commercial airlines in order to ensure the safety of all people onboard. Due to the high-risk nature of the situation and the consequences of possible outcomes, all employees responsible for screening passengers boarding aircrafts would be mandated to undergo intense training to be able to detect any clues to prevent another such occurrence happening in the future.

This example illustrates the importance of training and learning development in Homeland Security (HS). Recently, Salas and colleagues [2] define training as “the systematic acquisition of knowledge (i.e. what we need to know), skills (i.e. what we need to do), and attitudes (i.e. what we need to feel) (KSAs) that together lead to improved performance in a particular environment” (p. 473). Learning occurs when there is a permanent cognitive and behavioral change by acquiring the requisite competencies to perform the job. We submit that learning is ...