The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) Educational Leadership Development Program is a unique program designed to enhance the professional identity of IDF officers and commanders, especially education officers, and their conception of their positions as commanders and officers. The program helps infuse content into the role of "the commander as an educator" and promotes the development of the professional status of education in the IDF. Underlying the program are the concepts of vision and practice, educational identity and social sensitivity, and various aspects of the army, education, and Israeli society.

The Mandel Leadership Institute has run the IDF Educational Leadership Development Program since 2005. The program is catered for officers in the IDF Education Corps and for commanders, since the standard conception in the IDF is that commanders- not only education officers- have an educational role. The aim of this unique program is to promote and help mold the professional identity of education officers and commanders as educators.

Identity-related issues are at the heart of the program, which meets for one full day a week throughout an entire academic year. Participants are forced to confront four dimensions of identity: their identity as Jews, as Israelis, as IDF commanders, and as educators.