In a recent post on an aviation forum, one CFI described a new student he picked up with only two lessons in his logbook: His first flight ever [!] was 3.5 hours with 42 landings (all touch and go’s). His second flight was 4.2 hours which was a cross-country >50nm with 1.5 hours of hood time. There are so many things wrong here I don’t know where to begin. But it certainly highlights the basic necessity in all education (and obviously lacking here) of presenting the right experiences in the correct order with the appropriate level of challenge. Deconstructing large, complex skills or ideas and assembling them into a meaningful, usable form (making sense of it in your personal way) is called “chunking!” This reduces “cognitive load” and allows for faster learning and operation and is one of many tools an instructor may use to facilitate learning.
All complex learning projects require a reasonable outline or syllabus, mutually agreed upon, for a sensible order of presentation from basic to more complex. This ensures both progress and incremental mastery while sustaining motivation. Learning to land on lesson #1, with no background skills or preparation, is like bloodying your face by continually running at a high wall and trying to get over it; painful and demoralizing. It is no wonder we have an 80% drop out rate in aviation!
Chunking correctly manages “cognitive load” mentioned in previous blogs, and places your learner at the appropriate level of challenge. This is the most effective way to build solid sustainable skills in any learning situation; it generates “broadband for the brain”. Just flying in your “comfort zone” does not build new skills and this can be the problem with “scenario training” too early in flight training. This often occurs because of an admirable attempt to “keep it all fun.” Unfortunately, “education by osmosis” fails to adequately engage the learner and build essential skills. Early flight lessons require some hard work at the correct level of challenge- -remember those necessary scales on the piano preceding your amazing Chopin recital? “Fantasy flight training” can’t efficiently build “aviation muscle memory” that precedes higher learning (though it certainly builds CFI hours). As aerobatic competitors are fond of saying; “to get good, ya gotta go pull some Gs and burn avgas.” A good aviation educator has to achieve an effective balance of the skill building in the “struggle zone” but also integrate scenario/judgment opportunities at the appropriate time (no wonder we are so highly paid!)
In every activity “proper practice makes perfect” and this is also true for aviation educators. There is a real difference between “one hour 2000 times” and “2000 unique hours of real teaching experience”. Please sign up to follow this blog (and offer your suggestions and comments!) A future blog will deal more with acquiring expert educator skills more rapidly (are we still learning?). Fly safely (and often!)
