The Northern Hemisphere summer sun has certainly stimulated some
outstanding discussion here. In several parallel topics, we have been
addressing the tough issue of how do we go beyond giving crews the same
material over and over. I have often joked with my fellow trainers that
recurrent is the same as initial -- except the instructor talks faster to
fit everything into the shorter schedule.
I seems to me that there are three eras of training that we are progressing
through in our industry. The first era came as we realized that training
was important and we made it manditory. To define the requirement, we said
that your must train every X months and the training must consist of X
hours covering X topics. This was the Event Based Training era. Many of
us are living in this era today.
More recently, we recognized that Event Based Training didn't necessarily
provide any assurance that crew members were maintaining proficiency over
the long term. To address that, we required a formal definition of
proficiency standards and developed a process to go with it. This Advanced
Qualification Program (AQP) is designed to ensure continuing proficiency
throughout the career of an airman. Some of us are now in the middle of
the Proficiency Based Training era.
The Proficiency Based Training era shares a weakness with the Event Based
Training era, however. The weakness is that a single standard is used to
evaluate proficiency regardless of whether you are on your very first
qualification check for a new aircraft or the hundreth recurring check.
Neither era provides opportunities for, or expects, professional growth
during an airman's career. Such expectations rely on our professionalism,
not the regulatory requirements.
So, I propose that we need to move toward a new era in training -- the
Growth Based Training era. In this era, we will not encourage professional
growth. We will require it. And this brings us full circle back to the
basic premise of Tony Kern's book "Redefining Airmanship". For now, each
airman must create their own growth plan, but in the future, those of us in
the training department may be tasked with providing support for those
efforts.
Best regards,
Neil Krey
neilkrey_at_why.net
http://users.why.net/neilkrey/