TEACHING TO COMPETENCE: MYTHS AND SOLUTIONS

Op-ed by Dr. Suzanne Kearns. Originally published in the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) Training Report, 2017, Volume 7.

It can be argued that civil aviation has the most rigorous recurrent training requirements of any industry. Unlike our lawyer and medical doctor counterparts, where professionals reach a level of expertise at which society assumes they are competent, even the most distinguished aviation professionals are continually taught and tested throughout their careers.

With such rigorous ongoing training, it is worthwhile to occasionally step back and critically think about the way we teach and learn in aviation. What elements of our teaching effectively transfer to the operational environment, and which are lost from the minds of learners as they walk out of the classroom? What can we do, as aviation educators, to improve the learning?

The rise of competency-based training (CBT: sometimes called ‘evidence-based training [EBT]’) is a step in the right direction. Within CBT, the knowledge, skills, and attitudes required for professional competence are identified and organized into a series of ‘competency statements’. These competency statements become training objectives – focusing training on what learners actually need to know to perform as a competent professional.

CBT is operationally-relevant, and therefore a more efficient approach than old methods where a seasoned professional might tell you to “forget everything you learned in the classroom – now you will learn how the real world works” during your first day on the job. Within CBT, the intent is to teach learners how to apply the knowledge, skills, and attitudes learned in a training centre to the professional context.

An attractive element of CBT is that a person who learns faster is able to complete training faster. Therefore, CBT must be adaptive and flexible – allowing advanced students to expedite training and offering additional support for those who require extra time.

Yet, for the average instructor, building flexible/adaptive lessons that target real-world scenarios and link to competency statements can be an intimidating challenge! Before long we may find ourselves falling back into traditional methods of teaching. To challenge traditional teaching methods, with the goal of improving student learning and retention, let’s consider the following myths associated with traditional teaching and discuss a few solutions:

MYTH #1 – SUBJECTS SHOULD BE TAUGHT SEPARATELY

The distinctions between subject areas are human-made. They were created to make teaching easier, not because they necessarily led to better learning or retention in students. For example, ab initio pilots often learn and are tested separately on meteorology, air law, airmanship, and navigation. However, in a real aircraft, the application of these subject areas is continually intermixed. Pilots don’t think about meteorology, then stop and think of air law, and later consider navigation. Professional competence requires pilots to continually draw from their knowledge in all of these areas and apply them to situations.

SOLUTION - WHOLE TASK TRAINING

Whole task training situates all instruction within the context of real-world challenges. Training begins with a preliminary unit of supportive information, foundational concepts are explained, and then learners complete several units of whole-task experiences (sometimes called scenario-based training) beginning artificially simple and building in complexity1. Reference information is made available on-demand so learners can look up information they may need.

A whole task approach challenges learners to build and draw from their pool of professional knowledge, skills, and attitudes. Distinctions between topic areas (navigation, air law, etc.) are not relevant, since the more separated and isolated knowledge is, the more training it requires to teach the skills to put the topics back together.

A variety of methods are available to add this approach to your teaching, consider: case study analyses, e-learning scenarios, high- or low-fidelity simulations, apprenticeships, job-shadowing followed by analysis, and strategic games. The key is to align the activity with a training goal and ensure it creates an authentic and realistic real-world scenario.

MYTH #2 – TRADITIONAL CLASSROOM TEACHING WORKS FOR EVERY LEARNER AND SUBJECT AREA

Traditional classroom environments teach to the 50th percentile – the average student in the class. Students who are advanced might experience boredom with the pacing of content while those who are novices may experience ‘cognitive overload’ where they become overwhelmed by too much content too quickly.

SOLUTION – VARY CLASSROOM TEACHING STRATEGIES TO SUPPORT DIFFERENT TYPES OF LEARNERS AND SUBJECT AREAS

Training should align with the learner’s familiarity with the content. Novices benefit more from an instructor guiding them through material while experts benefit from the ability to independently problem-solve.

Training should align with the instructional objectives. Instructors need to ask themselves ‘what the goal of the lesson is'. Different goals require different teaching strategies. To apply this to your teaching, consider the following strategies for different instructional goals:

• Developing knowledge – use techniques to help learners organize new ideas and elaborate what is being learned.
• Learning new procedures – demonstrate a procedure and explain why it is important.
• Teaching the ability to problem solve – present learners with a case study or scenario and collectively evaluate the strategy used by the individuals within that situation.
• Teaching appropriate attitudes – observe established professionals and reflect on ideal attitudes. Role play and model ideal behaviours.

MYTH #3 – STUDENTS KNOW HOW THEY LEARN BEST

People use learning strategies that they have been taught throughout the course of their education. Very often this includes passive listening during class, studying through repetition (such as reading something over and over again), and long cram sessions the night before an exam. Unfortunately, much of what is learned through these methods is transient – it may get them through a test but it is quickly forgotten afterwards. In aviation training, we are not teaching to a test. We are teaching professionals how to safely manage operational challenges that they may encounter in the real world – and retention is crucial.

SOLUTION – TEACH YOUR STUDENTS STRATEGIES TO OPTIMIZE THEIR LEARNING

Learning can be optimized by engaging students as active participants rather than passive observers. Deep, effortful processing, where learners are challenged to elaborate on concepts and link them with their previous experiences, results in more learning and longer retention.

The National Training Laboratories in Maine suggest the following retention rates are associated with various teaching activities:

• 5% Lecture
• 10% Reading
• 20% Audiovisual
• 30% Demonstration
• 50% Discussion
• 75% Scenario-Based Training
• 90% Teaching Others.

Lecturing and independent reading is a very traditional and widely used instructional method. However, when you consider the low retention rates associated with these methods, the value of designing and investing in active learning experiences becomes clear.

Many of the more effective approaches, such as discussion and scenario-based training, are directly aligned with competency-based approaches. Other teaching strategies that can be implemented include the following:

• Quizzing, since as learners recall information their learning improves (compared to reading and re-reading). Consider implementing flash cards for this purpose.
• Encourage learners to space out study/practice sessions or switch between different subject areas. This back and-forth process feels more difficult but it results in improved learning.
• Present new material to learners and challenge them to solve a problem they don’t know the answer to. Then, present them with the answer. Even if learners get the answer wrong initially, this process improves learning and retention.
• Human working memory has a small capacity and is quickly overwhelmed, but our long term memory is practically limitless. Instead of requiring learners to memorize small details (resulting in cognitive overload) challenge them to elaborate on new material and apply it to their previous experiences.

MYTH #4 – LAPTOPS HELP STUDENTS LEARN

Finally, a challenge in the modern classroom is that instructors are often competing with the entire world of information accessible to learners online. Although laptops can be wonderful educational tools, they can also be massively distracting for learners. Over long classes, students engage in off-task computing activities almost two-thirds of the class time.5

Many learners feel they perform better with laptops because they can type faster than they could hand-write – however research suggests that typing results in reduced learning compared to hand-written notes. This is believed to be because typing allows learners to copy what is said verbatim while slower handwriting forces learners to consider the material and reframe it in their own words6.

In addition, laptops have an almost viral impact on classrooms. Laptop use lowers the performance of their users. However, laptops also reduce the learning of any student in direct view of the laptop screen!

SOLUTION – LIMIT LAPTOPS IN THE CLASSROOM

To avoid problems associated with laptops, their use must be carefully regulated by instructors. Learners should be instructed when to use their technology, such as in support of a game or a scenario-based activity, and otherwise keep it turned off. If laptops must be used, limit their use to the back row of the classroom so it does not have a negative impact on other learners.

In general, as educators in aviation, there is a long and respectable history of high-quality training. However, as the industry shifts towards competency-based education it creates new opportunities to rethink traditional approaches and evolve our teaching methods in new and creative ways.

References

Brown, P. C., Roediger III, H. L. & McDaniel, M. A., 2014. Make it stick: The science of successful learning. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press.

Kearns, S. K., Mavin, T. J. & Hodge, S., 2016. Competency-based education in aviation: Exploring alternate training pathways. Burlington, VT: Ashgate.

Mueller, P. A. & Oppenheimer, D. M., 2014. The pen is mightier than the keyboard: Advantages of longhand over laptop note taking. Psychological Science, pp. 1159-1168.

Ragan, E. D., Jennings, S. R., Massey, J. D. & Doolittle, P. E., 2014. Unregulated use of laptops over time in large lecture classes. Computers & Education, Volume 78, pp. 78-86.

Sana, F., Weston, T. & Cepeda, N. J., 2013. Laptop multitasking hinders classroom learning for both users and nearby peers. Computers & Education, Volume 62, pp. 24-31.

Smith, P. & Ragan, T., 2005. Instructional design. 3rd Ed. ed. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley.

van Merrienboer, J. J. G., Clark, R. E. & de Croock, M. B. M., 2002. Blueprints for complex learning: The 4C/ID-model. Educational Technology, Research and Development, 50(2), pp. 39-64.