Stages in the Development of Mastery and Adaptive Teaching

I ?am a gold seal flight instructor, CFI-AI, MEI in Beverly Massachusetts and owner of Avier Flight School with just over 6,000 hours of dual instruction given over the past 15 years. Before becoming a flight school owner, I served as a public-school teacher and dean for the previous 20 years.

The student’s journey

We all begin somewhere; every new thing we learn and every new thing we want to become has a starting point. Who we are when we start will be different from who we are when we get to our goal. In terms of becoming a pilot, the journey probably begins with a kernel of inspiration, whether a family connection that leads to the expectation that we will follow in footsteps or perhaps an audacious idea we get while are witnessing something that humbles us like an airshow, a trip to someplace far away, something we read, or someone we meet. No matter how we start or why we start, we find ourselves on a path that requires some real learning, a.k.a. a change of behavior as a result of experience.

This brief essay will identify the stages of mastery that we all go through enroute to our destinations and provide a simple explanation of just why we benefit from being aware of those stages, and for the teachers reading this, I will suggest how being aware of the stages might enhance your teaching.

Micro and Macro

Wow, there are so many elements associated with being or becoming a pilot. There’s what we need to know, what we need to perceive and understand, how we need to act, move, and interact, and then we must put it all together. The knowledge will involve aerodynamics, aircraft systems, airspace, rules and regulations, and many sub-elements of each of those subjects.

Some of these things can only be learned by sitting down and reading, no matter what your particular learning style happens to be. But before you sit down and read for knowledge, it will be helpful to create a context, a framework.

The stages of mastery that will be introduced here apply equally to the grandest frameworks that you will construct as well as the smallest elements of each.

Putting a name on it and thinking about how to teach it…

Acquire the skills, practice integrating the skills, know when to apply the skills[i]. These are three elements of mastery that we must go through for every nugget of knowledge and skill. One way to look at these elements is through the lens of “what aspiring experts know and can do[ii]” or an epistemological approach. This ties into what is probably the first thing we think of when we look at a teacher’s job. The other consideration that teachers can focus on is on “how (an aspiring pilot) is learning to be,” or an ontological approach.

What I’m getting at, and apologies for the jargon, is simply that making a list of the things we need to know is really just the starting point. Exploring the deeper level of what we’re trying to become is very important. Study hard, do your homework, but as a student put effort also into understanding and noticing the behaviors and actions of the experts around you. Instructors will likewise spend effort not only on noticing the correctness of the students’ knowledge but also their growth in becoming a pilot, and all that this entails.

Speaking for myself as a teacher, I can attest to not understanding why a student may not be making progress from time to time. Here’s one perspective on some solid reasons for those hiccups in training: 4 stages in the development of mastery.[i]

Stages of novice

Unconscious Incompetence! It doesn’t sound very affirming, but its where we all start.

Basically, it means we don’t yet know what we don’t know. It’s that first time we sit in the cockpit for a discovery flight. Everything in front of us looks foreign, and perhaps intimidating. Not to worry, this jumping-off point is just that, and a skillful teacher will note this and provide the needed support and context to get you past this stage. Sidenote for teachers: this is the best time for you to focus on the previously mentioned ontological approach, helping to establish a way of being for the intimidated student. Focus on letting them observe and mimic your behaviors while you help them to make connections that will last. The next lesson, or perhaps even a later moment in this first lesson, will see them beginning to draw on their now previous experience. One last observation on the teacher’s responsibility here is to understand, and communicate, the fact that there is no shortcut to compiling the very experience that will help them grow past this first stage of mastery. It takes time.

Conscious Incompetence. I know this still doesn’t sound like you’re ready to fill Sully Sullenberger’s shoes, but at least you are now aware of what is needed for the current situation, and teachers: now your student is able to put a name to those new skills that they are in the process of acquiring. It’s time for study and preparation; now you have an idea of what framework you are operating within and hopefully your teacher has provided guidance on what to study. Once you have begun to put this new framework to work for you and hung some newfound knowledge onto it, you are ready to cross over into the next stage of mastery.

Stages of expert

Conscious Competence! Now that sounds like a good place to be. Perhaps you can even put the uniform on now. Finally on some aspect of your journey to becoming a pilot, you are finally aware of what you need to know, and you’ve achieved it. You can start the plane under various circumstances without seeking the assistance of your teacher. You can move the aircraft on the surface, you can call the air traffic controller, you can move to where you need to be for take-off, you can prepare the airplane for departure, and… BOOM!! You can fly the darn thing. Good job! It wasn’t all that long ago that you had no idea how to do these things, but you are now gradually acquiring the awareness of what you are becoming, a pilot! This is a good place to be, for sure, but there’s more and you have already achieved it in so many other realms. Perhaps you already know how to drive a car, operate your smartphone, change a diaper, prepare a meal. Once you have earned your place as an expert and are ready for deeper levels of learning and experience, you have achieved the top stage in the development of mastery.

Unconscious Competence… Now you can see to all of your responsibilities in flight without conscious effort to doing the basics.

You can potentially be moving closer to you real job: safe operations. Now there is more bandwidth available to you for enhanced situational awareness. This still is just the beginning of course, not a destination; perhaps you’ve already heard the old, canned phrase: a good pilot is always learning.

Matching instructional techniques to each level

A few final thoughts aimed at us teachers. I used the fancy terms epistemological and ontological earlier in the essay. They’re not really that fancy I guess, but I’d like to draw attention to the importance of embracing both. The epistemo- term refers to a focus on teaching all those facts that must be learned, the stuff my favorite teacher calls the trivia. Your students quite simply need to know this stuff, no shortcut available. However please be careful to not allow yourselves to be the gatekeeper of only this. The onto- term focuses on your responsibility to bring them along into this new world of becoming a pilot.

Have checklists of terms and concepts that will be expected for each lesson, but also prepare yourself to notice their development in a larger sense, perhaps a macro-sense. In a structured curriculum, you would evaluate what the know at the end of each stage, but also be able to identify and evaluate what a successful candidate looks like. This essay also lays out another way of looking at student performance and making executive decisions on authorizing privileges like solo. When making a list of skills and levels of situational awareness needed for solo operations in general or for a particular flight on a particular day, be certain that nothing on that list still lingers in a novice stage. Conscious competence should be a minimum expectation for pilot-in-command operations. This rubric will also serve well when explaining to the student what further is needed before permission is earned. Considering this, please ensure that these evaluations are an integral part of your teaching and explanations.

Finally, be aware that while you are at a final stage ofUnconscious Competence on the skills you are teaching, likely your students are not. Be prepared to support them by identifying for them what stage they are at, in your opinion. You will be able to use this information and perspective to help them through the tough lessons, and also be able to praise them for what they are achieving even when it’s not quite what they’re hoping to hear from you.

[i] Ambrose, S., Bridges, M., Lovett, M., DiPietro, M., & Norman, M.(2010). How learning works: 7 research-based principles for smart teaching. teaching. P. 96.

[ii] The Cambridge Handbook of Expertise and Expert Performance?, pp. 33 - 39

DOI:?https://doi.org/10.1017/9781316480748.003[Opens in a new window]

Publisher: Cambridge University Press Print publication year: 2018

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