Fundamentals of Instructing Overview

Human Behavior

Behaviorism vs Cognitive Theory

• Behaviorism explains animal and human behavior entirely in terms of observable and measurable responses to stimuli
  • Classic "carrot and stick" approach
  • This is primarily used to break bad habits, but not used as much for teaching
• Cognitive theory: Process of thinking, decision-making, awareness, intellect
  • Thinking behaviors are important for the concept of learning

Limbic System and Prefrontal Cortex

• Limbic system: Emotions, stress, fight-or-flight response
• Prefrontal cortex: Rational, decision-making, language, long-term memory

Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs

• Abraham Maslow studied human needs and motivation
• He discovered than certain needs take precedent over others
• Learners tend to show little to no motivation or attention if most of their needs are not met
  • If a student is hungry, they will focus on that instead of a lesson
  • If a student feels unsafe, they will be distracted by a flight response
• Utilize a pre-lesson evaluation of readiness
  • Do you best to verify whether the learner is physically and mentally ready to learn

1. Physiological
2. Security
3. Belonging
4. Esteem
5. Cognitive and Aesthetic
6. Self-Actualization

Defense Mechanisms

• Repression: A person places uncomfortable thoughts in an inaccessible area of the mind
  • Not wanting to think about a bad lesson or flight
• Denial: Refusal to accept external reality because it is too threatening
  • Refusing to accept that the maneuver was that bad
• Compensation: Emphasizing strengths in other areas to distract from or disguise a weakness
  • "My landings were terrible, but my steep turns were great"
• Projection: Projecting the blame of a personal failing onto someone else
  • "That instructor is terrible, they don't know what they're doing"
• Rationalization: Justifying poor performance on external factors outside of their control
  • "The wind was too strong, that's why I couldn't hold altitude"
• Fantasy: Daydreams about how thing should be or will be in the future, ignoring the current reality
  • "Escaping" into a fantasy of being a great pilot
• Displacement: Redirecting anger or frustration to someone or something else
  • A student who isn't angry with their instructor, but takes it out on their spouse or family
• Reaction formation: Exhibiting a fake belief opposite of a true belief, because the true belief causes anxiety
  • A student may develop a "I don't care what others think" attitude to cover up feelings of loneliness

Learner Reactions to Stress

Stress will cause a flight or fight response in the body

• Normal reactions to stress:
  • Normal individuals respond rapidly and exactly
  • They will utilize their training and experience
• Abnormal reactions to stress:
  • Inappropriate response to actions, like over-elation
  • Extreme over-cooperation
  • Painstaking self-control
  • Big changes in mood from lesson-to-lesson
  • Severe anger towards an instructor

Effective Communication

Basic Elements of Communication

• Source: Speaker, writer, or instructor
• Symbols: Words or signs used
• Receivers: Listener, reader, or student

Barriers to Effective Communication

• C: Confusion between the symbol and the symbolized object
  • Word used is confused with what it is meant to represent
  • E.g. Confusion between an aerodynamic stall and an engine stall
• O: Overuse of abstractions
  • Abstract words may conger different images in the student's mind than you intended
• I: Interference
  • Physical injury, hearing loss, psychological issue, noise, or fear
• L: Lack of common experience
  • Since greatest barrier to communication since a student may have very different experiences than the instructor

Learning Process

Definition of Learning

• A process which results in a change in behavior, be it good or bad
• Gaining knowledge or skills through study, instruction, experience

Perceptions

• Perceptions are the basis for learning
• The process of learning involved mapping new sensory input into useful information
• Learning can be better accomplished by utilizing more than one sense (e.g. sight, sound, touch)
• An instructor should guide a learner's perception onto the most important things
• Insight is the process of grouping perceptions into meaningful wholes

Factors that Affect Perception

• S: Self-concept -- Positive self-image greatly influences total perceptions
• T: Time and opportunity -- student need the chance and time to related new perceptions to previous ones
• E: Element of threat -- Students tend to limit their attention to the threatening item
• P: Physical organism -- Humans need a working senses
• G: Goals and values -- Every experience is filtered and colored by an individuals beliefs and value system

Acquiring Knowledge

• Memorization: Rote, first attempt at learning information
• Understanding
• Concept learning
  • Organizing information into schemas, or generalizations

Stages of Skill Acquisition

1. Cognitive stage: Based in factual knowledge, memorization, fixations
2. Associate stage: Practice mode, associate task elements together, make assessments of their own progress
3. Automatic response stage: Perform skills automatically and can multi-task, skill is rapid and smooth

Facilitating Skill Acquisition

• Give feedback early and often, whether the learner's performance is good or bad
• The student should be learning how to judge their own performance
• Transition skills from effortful to automatic requires repeated practice
• The first few attempts will be awkward and slow

Types of Practice

1. Deliberate practice: Clear outcome and immediate and specific feedback
2. Block practice: Practicing until a skill becomes automatic, may lead to over-learning and poor long-term outcomes
3. Random practice: Mixing skills, which results in better retention

Learning Plateaus

• Plateaus can be caused by
  • Consolidation of other skills
  • Waning interest
  • Reaching of cognitive capability limits
  • The need for a more efficient method of practice

Domains of Learning

• Cognitive (thinking): Thinking, recall, application, synthesis, evaluation
• Affective (feeling): Attitudes, personal beliefs, and values
• Psychomotor (doing): Physical and mechanical skill, which may become increasingly automatic over time

Instructional Levels of the Psychomotor Domain

1. Observation
2. Imitations
3. Practice
4. Habit

Levels of Learning

• R: Rote / Memorization
  • The first attempt in acquiring knowledge
  • Memorization is quick, but lacks any depth and connection to other knowledge
• U: Understanding
  • The next stage of learning
  • Ability to make association between facts and procedures
  • Knowledge is organized in a useful way, with coherent groups of facts
  • "Mental model" or self-explanation
• A: Application
  • Applying and using the knowledge in a meaningful way
• C: Correlation / Concept Learning
  • Generalization of facts or steps into general concepts
  • Relies on categorization of knowledge into groups
  • Schemas are templates of thought that form when humans observe patterns

Aviation Instructor's Handbook pg. 3-9

Laws of Learning

• R: Readiness: Student must be ready to learn, want to learn, be properly motivated
• E: Exercise: Skills take rehearsal to master
• E: Effect: Successful experiences are more likely to be repeated, and thus better for learning
• P: Primary: Whatever is learned first will be learned strongest
• I: Intensity: Immediate, exciting, or dramatic experience will be more educational
• R: Recency: The more recent the information, the better it will be remembered

Aviation Instructor's Handbook pg. 3-11

Characteristics of Learning

• P: Purposeful: Learners will want to see relevancy of the material
• E: Result of experience: Knowledge results from a bank of experience
• M: Learning is multifaceted: Learning involves many elements of experience, and not always what's intended by an instructor
• A: Active process: Learners must continuously react and respond to material and experiences to learn from it

Aviation Instructor's Handbook pg. 3-19

Transfer

Near/far

• Near transfer: applying information in a closely-related area
• Far transfer: applying information in a novel situation which share some common structure with the original scenario

Positive/negative

• Position transfer: When previous information aids in the learning and understanding of new information
  • Example: Using skills flying shallow turns to help with steep turns
• Negative transfer: When previous information conflicts or confuses the new skill or information
  • Example: Trying to steer on the ground with the yoke instead of the rudder pedals

Learner Personalities

• Adult learners
  • Adults tend to be very goal-oriented
  • Adults tend to be self-directed and autonomous learners
  • Need to feel independent and in-control
  • Need to maintain self-esteem and self-image
  • Can tolerate longer blocks of instruction
• Self-directed
  • Can give them vague directions and let them work through
  • Like to see the practical relevance of presented material
• Young students
  • Young students tend to be more dependent on the instructor
  • Need specific directions and guidance
  • May require shorter block lengths of instruction
• Busy professionals
  • Busy professionals tend to be more self-directed, but have limited time
  • May have limited time to study and practice outside of lesson times
  • Can tolerate longer blocks of instruction

Slips vs Errors

• A slip: Honest mistake where a person plans to do one thing but does something else without intention
• A mistake: Person plans to do the wrong thing and succeeds

Types of Memory

1. Sensory memory: Receives and processing input from environment, filtering out things based on the person's pre-conceived notion of what is important
2. Short-term memory: Information stored briefly (~30 seconds), after which it will fade or be transferred to long-term memory
3. Long-term memory: Permanent storage of information, subject to fading and interference

Forgetting

1. Fading: Information which is not used will be lost over time
2. Interference: Newer experiences have overshadowed old one, or learning of similar things has confused the previous memory
3. Repression or suppression: Memory pushed out of reach because recalling it causes discomfort
4. Retrieval failure: Tip-of-the-tongue forgetting where a person cannot recall information in the moment

The Teaching Process

Steps of the Teaching Process

1. Preparation: Prepares scope of lessons, objectives, supplies
2. Presentation: Delivery information, can be done in different methods
3. Application: Have student perform or apply information which has been learned
4. Review and Evaluation: Evaluate student on their learning

Types of Training Objectives

• Performance objectives: Particular skill, knowledge, or behavior to be learned
• Decision objectives: Decision-making, higher-order thinking skills

Demonstration-Performance Method

1. Instructor introduces skill
2. Instructor demonstrations skill
3. Student tries to reproduce the skill
4. Instructor critiques student

Telling-and-Doing Technique

1. Instructor tells, instructor does
2. Student tells, instructor does
3. Student tells, student does
4. Instructor evaluates, student does

Obstacles to Learning During Flight Instruction

1. Feeling of unfair treatment
2. Impatience to proceed to more interesting operations
3. Worry or lack of interest
4. Physical discomfort
5. Apathy due to inadequate instruction
6. Anxiety

Assessment and Critique

Types of Assessments

• Traditional assessment: Written testing
• Authentic assessment: Tries to emulate real-world tasks and scenarios

Evaluation vs Critique

• Critique is immediate feedback to the learning so they can correct mistakes and make progress
  • This can be positive and negative feedback
  • Useful early in the learning process
• Evaluation
  • A more holistic test where a skill is evaluated from start-to-finish, and completion standards are used
  • This is useful to an instructor to evaluate progress, especially later in the training