Aviation Education and Training

Adult Learning Principles and Teaching Strategies

Irene M.A. Henley

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN: 9780754617334
• eBook ISBN: 9781351956352
• Topic: Technology & Engineering
• Subtopic: Mechanical Engineering
• Index: Technology & Engineering

The aviation teaching environment is fairly unique and combines both traditional and non-traditional teaching environments. There are presently few books that address adult learning principles and teaching strategies relevant to the aviation context. Furthermore, aviation education has not generally benefited from many of the developments made in the field of education. This timely book: - facilitates the development of knowledge and skills necessary to conduct effective instruction and training within the aviation context; - develops an awareness of critical issues that should be of concern to aviation educators and trainers; - provides aviation education and trainers with a variety of teaching strategies that can be effective in the development of essential skills in aviation professionals. The readership for this book includes university students who want to become instructors, as well as industry personnel who are involved in any of the various domains of aviation education, from junior flight instructors to the trainer of instructors, or from training captains, or traffic controllers to crew resource management and human factors facilitators.

Part 1
Learning Principles

1 Learning Theories and their Application to Aviation Education

Jayne Bye and Irene Henley

Introduction

Despite the fact that learning has been the subject of intense research for the last century or more, there is still little agreement about how learning occurs. What we do have, however, is a range of differing explanations about what happens when learning takes place, and these explanations are called learning theories (Merriam & Caffarella, 1999, p. 250). Each of these theories has a set of assumptions about the role of the learner in the process of learning, what motivates people to learn, the importance of the role of the teacher or trainer and the techniques required to facilitate learning. Therefore, looking at the process of learning, and more specifically at how adults learn, is a useful activity for teachers and trainers who wish to improve their skills in facilitating this process with participants in both workplace and classroom training environments.

This chapter focuses on the process of learning and explores a range of explanations of this process from five major psychological orientations: behaviourist, cognitive, humanist, social learning, and constructivist. Traditionally, aviation education (especially flight training) has been based mainly on behaviourist and cognitive learning theories. However, many in the field of aviation education now realise that, in order to understand the use of knowledge and the acquisition of complex psychomotor skills in the aviation domain, we also need to be aware of the role of goals, motivation and affect (emotions, values, feelings) in the learning process.

The first orientation to be discussed is the behaviourist approach. This approach has been the dominant framework for the design of much vocational education and training during the past century and as such provides an important foundation for understanding how this teaching and learning context has been shaped over the years. Indeed, its continued dominance and influence on the form of Competency-Based Training (CBT) in Australia will be examined in terms of what advantages it is still seen to offer teachers and learners in the aviation context.

The cognitive orientation is examined next and the focus of discussion is seen to shift here from the behaviourist interest in teaching techniques to the internal sense-making processes of the learner. An understanding of these processes is seen as useful for educators in helping learners understand and improve their own learning processes. This aspect of Chapter 1 links closely with the discussion of learning styles in Chapter 4.

The third orientation is the humanist approach that provides an interesting contrast to the first two orientations. Humanism’s concerns with the autonomy of the adult learner and personal growth through learning makes the learner’s needs rather than subject matter or course content central to the learning process. The limitations of this approach in the vocational education and training context are acknowledged; however, useful principles within the orientation are suggested for use in the aviation teaching and learning context.

Social learning and its links to popular workplace and management practices, such as mentoring, are examined in the fourth orientation. This useful approach can be seen to have direct application to workplace learning (on-the-job training) in the aviation context, especially with regard to its focus on self-regulation and on mentoring.

Finally, the constructivist orientation is examined with its interest in the internal learner processes of constructing knowledge as well as in environmental factors. Once again, direct application to vocational education and training in the aviation context can be seen in terms of current research into workplace learning that uses this orientation (e.g., self-directed learning and reflective practice).

Behaviourist Orientation

Overview

The behaviourist approach is one of the oldest scientific approaches to understanding learning (Lefrancois, 1997). Further, it is generally agreed that the behaviourist approach to teaching and learning has influenced much teaching and training at least in the USA, Canada, Great Britain and Australia, for 20 years or so (Pithers, 1998). This influence has its historical basis in psychological research carried out in the early twentieth century. Behaviourist research approached the psychological study of learning and motivation as an objective and experimental science and was popularised in the 1940s and 1950s due to “a wider community belief in the ability of science and engineering to address and solve the world’s problems” (Russell, 1999, p. 105). Furthermore, behaviourist techniques promised accountability, quality control and clear outcomes in education and training. Behaviourists claimed to answer important questions teachers and trainers were grappling with, such as “What kinds of feedback promote the best learning? How can material that is to be learned be presented so that it best grabs the learner’s attention? How can a lesson be taught so that the principle behind the lesson transfers to new situations?” (Kehoe & Macrae, 1999, p. 211).

Due to the popularity of this approach and the apparent advantages it was seen to offer, the behaviourist approach to learning and teaching came to dominate school education, military training and many vocational training systems (Russell, 1999, p. 105). The reason for its continued influence lies in the fact that accountability, quality control and clear outcomes are still issues of concern for educators in the aviation context today.

Definitions and Basic Tenets of the Behaviourist Orientation

As the name of this orientation suggests, educators working in this approach understand learning as changed behaviour. That is, all instruction has as its goal changed behaviour. In simple terms, the behaviourist orientation states that we learn by receiving stimuli from our environment that provoke a response. The interplay of stimuli and consequent rewards (or punishments) is seen as the mechanism responsible for the desired behaviour change.

According to Merriam and Caffarella (1999), there are three basic assumptions that behaviourists share about the nature of learning and the processes that cause learning to occur.

1. Behaviourists focus their study and research on observable and measurable behaviour rather than internal thought processes. In fact, one of the earliest behaviourist researchers, John Watson, thought that the study of psychology should “abandon the examination of inaccessible and unobservable mental events” (Tennant, 1997, p. 94). As will be seen below, not all theories of learning agree with this assumption.
2. Behaviourists believe that all behaviour can be shaped by the environment. Therefore, all learning is “determined by the elements in the environment, not by the individual learner” (Merriam & Caffarella, 1999, p. 251). The elements in the environment that have the power or role to shape behaviour are called stimuli. As suggested by the term, these stimuli stimulate a response in the learner and this response (if it is the desired one) will be rewarded, therefore providing the conditions for the behaviour to be repeated if the same stimuli are again present in the environment.
3. According to Grippin and Peters (1984), “the principles of contiguity (how close in time two events must be for a bond to be formed) and reinforcement (any means of increasing the likelihood that an event will be repeated) are central to explaining the learning process” (cited in Merriam & Caffarella, 1999, p. 251).

These processes of learning were studied by behaviourists using the scientific method in controlled laboratory settings (Russell, 1999, p. 105). The results of experimentation carried out in this orientation were approaches to learning based on three major conditioning theories — classical conditioning, connectionist conditioning and operant conditioning. The bases of these theories and the contributions of key theorists are discussed briefly below.

Classical conditioning Pavlov is probably the theorist most widely known and associated with conditioning theories. The story of his discovery and experiments are similarly well known.

While performing a series of experiments on digestion and salivation and dogs, Pavlov and his assistants discovered that after a number of trials that involved placing food in a dog’s mouth, he began to salivate at the mere sight of the food, then at the sight of the food dish, and finally even at the sound of the assistants’ approaching footsteps. (Gilmer, 1970, p. 298)

Connectionist conditioning Also referred to as the Association Theory, connectionist conditioning was first researched and reported by Edward Lee Thorndike (1874-1949) in 1911. Thorndike’s work, sometimes also called the stimulus-response (S-R) theory of learning, has had a major influence on education and training practice this century. “Using animals in controlled experiments, Thoradike noted that through repeated trial-and-error learning, certain connections between sensory impression, or stimuli (S), and subsequent behaviour, or responses (R), are strengthened or weakened by the consequences of behaviour” (Merriam & Caffarella, 1999, p. 251).

Thorndike’s work can best be examined by briefly looking at the three laws of learning he proposed and later modified during the course of the first half of the 20 century. Most flight instructors will recognise Thorndike’s laws of learning since many flight instructor manuals and guides reflect a behaviourist approach.

• Law of Effect — The Law of Effect was introduced by Thorndike in 1911 and was later modified after 1930 (Kehoe & Macrae, 1999). The Law of Effect professed that learning consists of an association between the surrounding cues (stimuli) and one’s response to them. In addition, Thorndike indicated that such association would be strengthened only when the cue and the response are followed closely by a reward (stimulus-response and reinforcement theory or S-R-R). However, this reward does not become part of the association. Rather, it acts as a catalyst in forming the association. The result is that when the same cue occurs again, it tends to activate the association and elicit the previously rewarded response (Kehoe & Macrae, 1999, pp. 213-214).
  In the original formulation of the Law of Effect, Thorndike stated that, “if a stimulus leads to a response, which in turn leads to reinforcement, the S-R connection is strengthened. If, on the other hand, a stimulus leads to a response that leads to punishment, the S-R connection is weakened” (cited in Hergenhahn & Olson, 1993, p. 64). However, further testing of this law led Thorndike to a very significant revision after 1930. Thorndike found that punishment, in fact, did not have an impact on the formation of the connection, and therefore, did not have a significant role to play in the learning process (Hergenhahn & Olson, 1993).
• Law of Readiness — The Law of Readiness states that “if the organism is ready for the connection, learning is enhanced; otherwise learning is inhibited” (Merriam & Caffarella, 1999, p. 251). Stated simply, this means that:
  1. When someone is ready to perform some act, to do so is satisfying.
  2. When someone is ready to perform some act, not to do so is annoying.
  3. When someone is not ready to perform some act and is forced to do so, it is annoying.

Therefore, it could generally be said that “interfering with goal-directed behaviour causes frustration and causing someone to do something they do not want to do is also frustrating” (Hergenhahn & Olson, 1993, p. 63).

• Law of Exercise — Of the three main laws proposed by Thorndike, the Law of Exercise was the one that he modified the most. Originally, the law had two parts known as the law of use and the law of disuse. Basically, this law attempted to make clear the connection between repetition of a behaviour and learning. The law of use proposed that the connection between a stimulus and a response was strengthened the more the connection was exercised, that is, through repetition. The law of disuse proposed that if the connection was not practised, then the connectio...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of Figures
• List of Tables
• List of Contributors
• Preface
• Acknowledgements
• List of Abbreviations
• PART 1  LEARNING PRINCIPLES
• PART 2  TEACHING STRATEGIES
• Subject Index