Fundamentals of Instruction Flashcards
What is a risk?
- The probability and possible severity of accident or loss from exposure to various hazards
What is learning?
- A change in behavior of a learner as a result of experience
What is human behavior?
- A result of a person’s attempt to satisfy certain needs
Why is understanding human behaviors important?
- It helps us as instructors adjust our instruction to better fit the needs a learner is trying to satisfy
What is motivation?
- The need or desire that causes a person to act
- It can be:
- Positive or negative
- Tangible or intangible
- Subtle or obvious
What are Maslow’s hierarchy of needs?
In order of most important from the bottom of the pyramid:
- Physiological needs: Eating, water; basic necessities
- Safety/Security: Sense of security with family, income, debt
- Love & Belonging: Relationship, sense of belonging
- Self-esteem: If someone believes they can fly or not, “they’re right”. Their confidence is important and lack of it would be a barrier
- Self-Actualization: Their goals in life, or as a pilot whether it’s to fly for the airlines or to own their own plane to transport their family on vacation
- Cognitive & Aesthetic (added later): The need to know what’s going on around them so they can either control the situation or make informed choices about what steps might be next. The brain releases the dopamine to excite the learner when they’ve achieved something (like the first solo flight)
What are some defense mechanisms:
8 Types: (RRR-DD-C-F-P)
- Repression: A student pushes uncomfortable thoughts into inaccessible areas of the subconscious mind. A student repressing their fear of flying is a good example of this. It’s not necessarily put away, but thought I’d put away to be dealt with later or possibly never.
- Reaction Formation: A student forming their own form of reality because reality gives them anxiety. Convincing themselves of a better alternative.
- Rationalization: Justifying a response, or action that would be unacceptable. For example, not completing an exam and blaming it on not having enough time to complete it on time. Not admitting to taking practice attempts offered by a practice exam.
- Displacement: An unconcious shift of emotion, affect, or desire from the original object to a more acceptable, less threatening emotion
- Denial: The student refuses to accept the reality that something that has happened, or will happen. Rather than accepting they did something wrong, they’re in denial that they did something wrong (i.e. forgetting the gas cap after refueling the a/c)
- Compensation: Disguising the presence of a weak or undesirable quality by emphasizing a more positive one
- Fantasy: Daydreaming about the end goal rather than focusing on what step is needed in the moment to get to that goal. It becomes easier to daydream about the career than to achieve the current certification
- Projection: Displacing the blame for something onto others. For example, blaming the reason for failing a checkride on the examiner
What are some examples of emotional reaction that can inhibit learning during flight training?
- Anxiety and stress
- Impatience
- Worry or lack of interest
- Physical discomfort, illness, fatigue, and dehydration
- Apathy due to inadequate instruction
How can we help a student cope with anxiety with flight instruction?
- Providing clear lessons and goals
- Ultimately this would help the student build their confidence and be more comfortable in the airplane
Are there good types of stress?
- Yes
- Stress can help you naturally react to something that you’ve experienced before. Like when doing a power on stall, and catching it before it fully develops into a spin. The stress you’ve experienced before when you learned can help you quickly react to the imminent danger/situation.
Describe how a learner may react to a stressful situation?
- Normal Reaction: Responds rapidly and exactly within the limits of their experience and training. The individual thinks rationally, acts rapidly, and extremely sensitive to all aspects of their surroundings
- Abnormal Reaction: No response to a given situation, or maybe an illogical response, or doing more than is called for by the situation
How can you counteract your student’s anxieties?
- Counteract anxiety by reinforcing the learner’s enjoyment of flying and teaching them to cope with their fears
What’s the difference between acute and chronic fatigue?
Acute
- Short-term
- The primary consideration in determining the length and frequency of flight instruction
- Felt after long periods of physical and mental strain (IFR training)
Chronic
- Occurs when there’s not enough time of break in between lessons
- Basically acute fatigue, compiled on more acute fatigue
- Recovery requires a prolonged period of rest
What makes up accurate communication?
Source
- The ability of an instructor to communicate effectively with a student. Effective communication would be difficult with a foreigner with an accent, because as an instructor I would have difficulty understanding if they understand what I’m explaining in a lesson.
Symbols
- These are perceived audibly, visually, or kinesthetically. An instructor may hold a receivers attention longer and more effectively with good symbols.
Receiver
- Effective communication is successful when the receiver understands what’s being communicated, and then showed with corrective action; or a change in behavior
What kind of barriers are there to communication?
C.O.I.L
Confusion:
- The symbolized object/message may not clear to the learner.
- The language can be misinterpreted to the learner from the source and give the wrong message (turn vs bank vs head this way etc.)
Overuse of Abstractions:
- The use of abstract words can also generate unintentional understandings. For example aircraft can mean an airplane to one person, but may mean a helicopter to another, which may also mean a glider to some others.
- Abstract words may be necessary, but clarify what they mean with illustrations and examples. When speaking about aerodynamics for example. It’s universal to all aircraft, but how it’s used in different aircraft should be illustrated to be shown by source (instructor)
Interference:
- Noise can distort the message when trying to communicate. When explaining something in the plane, a poor set of headsets can interfere with what’s trying to be communicated
Lack of Common Experience:
- My experience as a 34-year-old guy as I explain things to someone right out of high school may not be understood from that student. For example, someone born in 2007 as I explain security risks involved with 9/11 may not know what 9/11 is. It may leave them confused.
How can you develop your communication skills?
Role Playing
- CFI applicant flying with an actual CFI who plays the role of a student learning pilot. Or having the student chair fly on the ground so they can develop a flow to flying.
Instructional Communication
- Instructor must determine if learning has occured. Communication has not occured unless the desired results of the communication has taken place.
Listening
- Being able to analyze the response from a student to see if my intended message is received and understood. On a number of occasions, I (as a student) would always hear what my CFI was saying, but didn’t comprehend it, but I just said yes to move past the subject. Knowing when that happens with my student will tell me when I need to stop and reiterate the message so it’s understood
Questioning
- Good questioning can determine how well the learner understands what is being taught.
Instructional Enhancement
- The more the instructor knows about a subject, the better the instructor is at conveying that information. Additional knowledge and training improves the instructor’s confidence and gives more depth to the lesson.
How do we know that learning has occured?
- When we see a change in behavior. Like when the student learns to use right rudder on departure, after being told multiple times in previous lessons. When they finally apply the right rudder, they have learned what has occured.
What are the two ways of learning?
Behaviorism
- Reinforcing behaviors of the learner by someone outside (CFI)
- The “carrot stick” method. In other words, rewarding desired responses to given scenarios with a compliment or a lollipop
- A student making sure to add right rudder because the last time they didn’t, there was a violent yaw to the left
Cognitive
- Learning is focused more on a change of the way someone thinks, understands, or feels
- Dewey conecpt introduced “reflective thought”. Looking back at gopro footage of what happened, and understanding why the plane reacted the way it did when there wasn’t enough right rudder for example
- Pageant concept is when assimilation (old ideas meeting new situations) meets accommodation (changing the old ideas to meet the new situation); resulting in intellectual growth
What are perceptions, and why are they important to learning?
- Perceptions result when a person give meaning to external stimuli or sensations.
- All learning comes from perceptions. When perceptions come together, they form insight
What is insight?
- Insights are grouped perceptions; or learning from all senses
- Insight can create larger learning blocks that assist in making the learner understand what is happening better
- Just like an electrician can learn more by trial and error, the same can be said about a pilot. We group our perceptions of what we felt in those moments of failure into insights, along with other moments of perception
What factors can affect a learners perceptions/insight? (GSTEP)
1. Physical Organization: Pilots need to see, hear, feel and respond while flying in the air
2. Goals & Values: How someone perceives something affects their perceptions. For example, a player on a team commits a penalty, depending on which team you support, it could affect your perception on the penalty
3. Self-Concept: A negative self-concept can prevent a learner from continuing flight training. A positive self-image may accept the critique and implement the critique and make the adjustment to their perception
4. Time & Opportunity: Perceptions must be given time and opportunity to make the connections based on two different lessons. Slow flight, and short field landings lessons can be paired closer together to make perceptions from each correlate
5. Element of Threat: This actually reduces learning. Because of that negative feeling/reaction to the threat narrows the perception to the issue at hand. For example descending during steep turns
