by Daniel Gustin, Chief Instructor at Canadian Flight Trainers, a modern online ground school dedicated to providing positive learning experiences to private and commercial pilots. Daniel also has experience as an aerobatic instructor, airline pilot, and simulator instructor
Evaluation model
- What are you doing?
- Why are you doing it?
- How effective is it?
- How are students responding?
- How can you do it better?
The journey that a commercial or airline pilot takes to become an instructor involves increasing their skill level, deepening knowledge, and training in human learning. Becoming an instructor requires a fundamental shift in thinking patterns that extends beyond just having knowledge about something or simply being able to perform a certain task. As instructors step into their roles, they are expected to persuade their students to fly an aircraft in a desired manner and provide the necessary justifications for doing so. Through these actions, flight instructors constantly answer one important question: “Why?” Sometimes the answers to students’ questions are not as simple as one hopes. An instructor may have to justify to students why they should do a lookout before initiating a turn, or why the pilot monitoring should ask the pilot flying if they can remove the status page on an Airbus. In this process of reasoning, flight instructors are sometimes forced to self-reflect on their own training to justify how they themselves flew an aircraft. This act of self-evaluation and analysis seems to have opened a new way of thinking for many of the industry’s instructors. Through their instructor training, some pilots have learned that some of the flying techniques they were taught may have been inappropriate for certain scenarios or taught incorrectly. Self-reflection allows them to shape the way they fly an aircraft and subsequently how they can teach future students.
Self-reflection isn’t anything new in the field of education, with many studies pointing to numerous benefits for both teachers and students. The modern day reflective practice originated in 1910 with the work of John Dewey and has since been built on by scholars in a variety of disciplines. Michael Potter (2015) defines this practice as the activity of recollecting, reasoning about, and critiquing one’s experiences, beliefs, values, and practices for the purposes of evaluation and improvement. Engaging in critical reflection extends beyond the simple examination of past knowledge and experiences. To me, being critical is a transformative process in which we change our behaviour because we have challenged and contextualized our past. Imagine two airline pilots, Gabby and Patricia, each with 10 years of experience. Gabby has 10 years of experience, while Patricia has one year of experience repeated 10 times. Gabby has learned from her mistakes and has grown into a better pilot, whereas Patricia has gone through the same motions year after year.
Engaging in critical self-reflection allows us to give more purpose to our actions, bridges the gap between knowledge and skill, identifies when a new approach may be required, and allows us to break bad habits and build trust with our students. Students have a chance to learn faster and better when engaged in critical self-reflection, and they may be better prepared in future complex scenarios. One great benefit is that this type of practice can be taught by instructors, learned by students, and exercised by any pilot (including management at air operators). At this point, you may be wondering how you can engage in critical self-reflection.
To begin, this practice requires a certain amount of vulnerability, honesty, and awareness of oneself. As an instructor, begin by asking yourself some of these questions:
- Do you know what purpose you have in your role?
- What type of flight instructor are you?
- Do you teach a student to pass a flight test or are you trying to prepare the student for what you think will help them once they are licensed or rated?
- What makes you uncomfortable as a flight instructor and what can you do about that?
- If your chief pilot or chief flight instructor challenged one of your methods, how would you defend it?
Once you understand who you are and what you believe in as a flight instructor, it may be time to welcome feedback from your students and peers. You may choose to ask students what works for them and what doesn’t, or you can invite a fellow instructor to critique a pre-flight briefing.
As a flight instructor, you can facilitate this practice with your students in several different ways. But before this can be done, I must first note that the student must trust you. It is one thing for a student to be vulnerable with themselves, but another to do that with you. You must respect the student and ensure no harm comes to them while they engage in this practice. If a student has any fear or hesitation, they may easily abuse these activities, rendering them unreliable or pointless. Trust is sacred in your relationship with your students; do not take advantage of it.
One of the most common activities I’ve seen students engage in is simply journaling. This can be done in the student’s own pilot training record or perhaps in a separate debriefing notebook. If using a learning journal, I suggest flight instructors provide examples to show what they feel is appropriate as a journal entry. You may also encourage students to engage in simple hangar talk around the airport or the simulator building. Hangar talk allows peers to engage with each other, learn from each other’s experiences, and adapt those experiences to their own lives. Lastly, my most important method is through constructive feedback to the student. As flight instructors, it is our job to facilitate student learning so they may make sound and appropriate decisions when they are not with us. Help students identify their strengths and areas to work on in a positive way.
I must conclude with a simple story from a colleague who recently completed a pilot proficiency check (PPC). In the de-brief, the examiner asked my colleague why he flew the aircraft in a particularly “inappropriate” way during a localizer approach, although it was still safe and worthy of a 3. His answer was “That’s how I was taught by blank space ____.” The examiner explained that the background of the instructor was a little outdated by modern standards and that the two pilots should have questioned their instructor’s methods a bit more. This is an unfair, but common occurrence in Canadian aviation at all levels of our industry. In this scenario, who could have engaged in a self-reflective practice and who would have benefited from it? When you come up with an answer, ponder about how you could be wrong. Try to learn more about yourself by thinking about how you think.
References
Potter, M. K., with contributions from E. Kustra, N. Baker, L. Stolarchuk, and P. Boulos. (2014). Course Design for Constructive Alignment: Course Primer (Winter 2014 Edition). Windsor, ON.