Ideas for Improvement from Redbird Migration!

There were many great presentations and breakouts at Redbird Migration that will take weeks to digest and present here! The significant AOPA presence almost eclipsed the whole Redbird contribution, especially the new AOPA Flight Training Advantage App now in Beta test (more on this soon). For all pilots, Joe Brown masterfully modeled a pathway to greater safety in flying through discipline and regular proficiency.

Only 4000 Professional CFIs in USA!

SAFE member Eric Crump recorded an excellent breakout digging deep into FAA statistics and revealing that despite the 114K flight instructor certificates, there are surprisingly, only about 12K truly “active flight instructors” (working with pilots toward ratings). Of these, 2/3s or all CFIs are brand new (8K new CFIs last year). And most of these CFIs are hour-builders transitioning to another career. We have only about 4,000 professional CFIs in the US that are continuously active in the aviation industry for more than a year. This means only about 4,000 instructors in the field building their professional skills and carrying institutional knowledge forward from year to year. 2/3 of CFIs on the job are inexperienced. True lifetime educators in the business are increasingly rare! This points out the critical need for SAFE mentoring program and SAFE CFI-PRO™ This also explains the rarity (and value) of Master Instructors! The geographical listing of SAFE members is here.

Error-Based Learning and Constructive Criticism

Another helpful breakout session for educators was the validation of educational practices undertaken by Chris Moser as part of his Master’s Degree at Embry Riddle.

Leveraging and analyzing AOPA’s extensive survey data, Chris scientifically validated the importance of Syllabus Usage, Pre-Lesson Preparation, Error-based Learning and Constructive Criticism. Though the first two (syllabus and prep) are well-accepted aviation tools, both error-based learning and constructive criticism are rare (and were found to be even more important). These two tools are underappreciated by educators and also mentioned in the SAFE breakout.

Error-Based Learning is often missed by new aviation educators since it is not covered in the FAA Instructor’s Manual. And there is a tendency for inexperienced CFIs to overcontrol most flight lessons both on the yoke and the radio preventing any experimentation and wandering by the student. But a well-established necessity in learning skill-based activities is for the learner to explore, and discover their own errors and self-correct. Constructive Criticism (and guided reflection) after a lesson guides the corrections to ideal standards and suggests “opportunities for improvement.”

The SAFE breakout reinforces the point that new CFIs seldom allow “constructive exploration” by the learner. Most aviation experience for new CFIs up to the point of CFI certification mandates precision and accuracy in every flight; additionally, the “pilot personality” is most often competitive and emotionally cold (whereas “compassionate coach” is a better model for success). It is often shocking for new CFIs to be going sideways and frequently off altitude in their new world as a learner explores their abilities and controls! (See the previous blog on “Two Certificates-Two Skill Sets!“) Another recommendation in the SAFE breakout is leveraging “incremental mastery” to motivate and inspire students to increase retention. Fly safe out there (and often)!