What is human behavior?
Human behavior is:
- the attempt to satisfy certain needs
- the combination of things that makes people act in predictable ways
What is important to consider in a instructor-learner relationship?
Every learner has a unique learning style and personality.
- The match or mismatch between the way an instructor teaches and the way an individual learns contributes to a positive or negative instructional experience.
- The responsibility falls on the instructor to work WITH the unique learning styles of their student rather than against them.
Explain Maslow’s Hierarchy and how it relates to flight instruction.
A theory that suggests humans needs must be met in order of importance.
Depicted as a pyramid:
PSLECAS (base upwards)
- Physiological: food, water, shelter
- Safety & Security: protection from danger or harm
- Love & Belonging: social needs of belonging through relationships
- Self-Esteem: feeling good about one’s self through internal and external sources
- Cognitive: natural need to learn about the world
- Aesthetic: natural desire to achieve beauty and order in a person’s world
- Self Actualization: doing what you were born to do, reaching your full potential
If basic level needs are not met, learning can be impeded due to a lack of motivation or attention.
Explain what defense mechanisms are and then list the ones most common in flight instruction
Unconscious reactions that aim to distort, transform, or falsify reality to protect one’s ego.
DR DR CPR F
- Denial: rejection of a threatening reality
water bottle stuck in rudder pedals. - Repression: placement of uncomfortable thoughts into inaccessible areas of the unconscious mind.
A student experiences a wing drop stall but when asked about it claims they don’t remember. - Displacement: a shift of a negative emotion/feeling to a less threatening substitute, typically an object.
After struggling with maneuvers, student blames the aircraft controls for feeling off. - Reaction Formation: when a person chooses to believe something opposite of the truth to avoid facing an uncomfortable reality.
A student who is a bit of a social outcast develops an indifferent attitude to cover up feelings of loneliness. - Compensation: making up for a weakness by emphasizing a strength.
Student who struggles with stick and rudder skills becomes extremely focused on improving their ground knowledge to appear competent. - Projection: placement of unacceptable impulses onto someone else in an attempt to relegate blame.
A student’s performance for a lesson is deemed unsatisfactory because they went outside of standards, but they insist it was because they had a poor examiner. - Rationalization: making excuses for unacceptable actions.
Student blames their unsatisfactory performance on a lesson by claiming there was not enough time to learn the material. - Fantasy: engaging in daydreams about how things should be rather than how they are as a psychological escape.
Student talks about becoming a captain at a major airline but is struggling with fundamental skills.
What are typical learner emotional/physical reactions that pose obstacles to learning?
US AI AWP
- Unfair treatment
When a student feels they are being treated unfairly it may lead to resentment and reduced motivation. - Stress: mental or emotional strain that causes the brain to alert the body
- Anxiety: The feeling of uneasiness due to uncertainty.
The most significant psychological factor affecting flight instruction. - Impatience: frustration when training progress is slower than expected
A greater deterrent to learning than generally recognized. - Apathy: lack of motivation or emotional investment into the learning process
Typically due to inadequate instruction. - Worry: emotional upsets due to flight training or personal circumstances
- Physical discomfort, illness, fatigue, dehydration (IMSAFE)
What is stress? What are normal reactions to it?
Stress is a state of mental or emotional strain which causes the brain to alert the body.
Normal responses include:
TAS
- rational thinking
- rapid, accurate action that is within the limits of their training
- sensitivity to surroundings
What are abnormal reactions to stress? How should a flight instructor deal with these abnormal reactions?
MISREP
- Marked changes in mood from lesson to lesson
A student exhibits positive morale on one lesson followed by a deep depression on the next. - Inappropriate laughter or singing as an attempt to self soothe
During stall practice a student experiences a wing drop and starts uncontrollably laughing. - Severe anger typically directed towards others
A student yells at their flight instructor for deeming their performance out of standards on a lesson. - Rapid changes in emotions
A student goes from excited and confident at the start of a maneuver lesson to frustrated and discouraged within minutes. - Extreme over cooperation
The student is desperate to please and avoid conflict that they lose independent judgment entirely, treating every instructor word as a command to be executed instantly rather than guidance to be thoughtfully applied. - Painstaking self control (high tension): rapid, inaccurate action that is outside of limits of their training
During a landing, the student is white knuckling the yoke, speaks little to none, and appears very visibly tense trying to land.
Abnormal reactions to stress indicate a potential psychological abnormality and should be dealt with immediately:
- The instructor should arrange for another instructor to conduct an evaluation flight
- The instructor has a responsibility to refrain from instructing the affected learner
What are things to consider when it comes to teaching an adult learner?
- Like all students, they must be shown respect
- They are learning because they find the skill or knowledge useful
- They seek training to cope with life changing events
- They are practical, autonomous, and self directed
- They have previous life experiences to draw upon
- They are goal and relevancy oriented, meaning they want to apply knowledge immediately
- The need to increase or at least maintain self respect is a strong motivator
What is communication and what makes it effective? What are the basic elements?
Communication is when an idea is transmitted from one person to another.
Effective communication is determined by the similarity between the idea transmitted and idea received.
SSR
- Source: flight instructor
- Symbol: medium for transmitting an idea (oral, visual, tactile)
- Receiver: student
The source must alter their message to account for the abilities, attitudes, and experience of the receiver.
Effective communication is only achieved when the receiver reacts with understanding and changes his or her behavior according to the intent of the source.
What are the most common barriers to effective communication?
Most common reasons communication is disrupted.
COIL
- Confusion of symbol: misinterpretation of a word with what it is meant to represent. The word is NOT the thing.
A new student being introduced to stalls believes it has to do with the engine of the airplane, similar to a car. - Overuse of abstractions: A source using abstract terms (ideas that cannot be directly experienced) may not evoke the same ideas in the mind of the receiver.
An instructor lecturing multiple students on the components of an aircraft could evoke multiple different ideas of an aircraft in each students mind (helicopter, blimp, plane, etc.). - Interference: prevention of an idea being transmitted by external interference
During a ground briefing in the main hangar, people keep walking past the door/window causing the student to become distracted. - Lack of common experience: words are unable to communicate the desired idea without common experience. This is the single greatest barrier to effective communication.
During a students first time practicing stalls, the instructor tells the student that an indication for an impending stall is mushy flight controls, which the student has never experienced.
What are the communications skills that need to be developed?
These communication skills do not occur automatically and require active development.
LIQIR
- Listening with comprehension while looking for underlying reactions and responses
- Instructional Communication: occurs when the instructor explains an idea and determines that the learner exhibits the desired response that indicates they have received the idea
- Questioning: open ended questions limited to one of who, what, when, where, why, or how, that are adapted to ability, experience, and attitude of the learner.
- Instructional Enhancement: The more an instructor knows about a subject, the better they will be at conveying that information.
- Role Playing: method of communication / learning involving source and receiver performing a particular role
