Glad you're back in action. I thought somebody had been patrolling our
ranks with a tranquiliser gun.
Do we need to update the theories we build on? Good question.
Age alone need not be the cause to question a rule. There are some laws
that have been around a while and well stood the tests of time and
usage. Mt Ararat springs to mind. Newton gives us examples in the field
of dynamics. The law of gravity seems unlikely to need updating, for
some time yet, and so on. In a selfless empirical act, Tony Kern once
travelled all the way to Darwin, in our remote North, to confirm the
Three Laws of Thermodynamics, in the Darwin Casino, no less. (1. You
can't win. 2. You can't break even. 3. You can't get out of the game.)
Re: Thorndike's sixpack, I always add the 'Law of Age'. The older we
get, the better we learn knowledge, the poorer we learn skills. That
aside, I was about to peck out a lengthy diatribe on pedagogy and
andragogy when I re-read Vince Mancuso's paper. He's said it all. Go no
further.
So maybe a better question is, 'How well are we using this stuff?' Vince
has pointed out tirelessly that crm is skill-based, or should be. Go to
his examples under both the 'law of readiness' and the 'law of
exercise'. Skills are only learned through practice - by doing. Further,
skill maintenance can only be achieved through continuous practice -
like daily, not two-to-four times a year. (OK, take Sundays off.) That's
the law, according not only to Mancuso and Thorndike, but many others in
the field of pedagogy.
Let's look at another rule. Primacy. If something is important, it
should be taught first - and without competition. Yet we teach safety
incidentally, as a by-product of pilots' learning to fly. Safety skills
are surely of such fundamental importance that they must be taught
seperately, in the first instance. It should certainly not have to
compete with something as gripping to the learner as hands-on flight
training.
Vince has also pointed out that there is a whole lot of crm stuff that
can be done for nothing. This is not low cost simulation, it is
zero-cost simulation. I do work with pilots that has allowed me to flesh
that proposition out. Let's say that the essence of crm training is
safety-oriented. Every individual has a natural 'personal safety
factor'. It comprises knowledge, skills and attitudes. All are
susceptible to improvement, without straying at all from
Thorndike-plus-one. I have previously mentioned the 'cargo cult'
mentality - folk waiting for something to be dropped in their lap. Yet
every person can do something - lots of things, actually - to increase
their safety factor, at no cost. My stuff is aimed at ab initio pilots,
and I'm quite happy to share it with others in the field. It can also be
translated into material for experienced pilots. And it needn't cost a
cent.
Let's use physical fitness as an example. Fatigue is an error-producing
condition. A pilot at the peak of physical condition is in better shape
at the end of a long flight than if he or she was not particularly fit.
Serious commitment to exercise will thus increase a person's safety
factor above its natural level, and it need not cost anything. Are we
going to wait until there's a regulation that says you must be
physically fit? I'd rather not. I prefer the scenario in which pilots
acknowledge the need and do it as part of their professionalism -
maximising their stamina, their ability to perform safely under stress.
It's an attitude.
You can say the same about situational awareness. The basis of SA is, in
terms of the IP/PCT theory Keith Hendy has written about, control over
the attention time allocated to information gathering. Take the example
of getting a reading from an instrument. There are two available
strategies. 1. Look at the clock for long enough to get the reading. 2.
Allocate it a series of glances as part of an overall time/attention
allocation plan. 1. may be fine if you don't have anything else to look
at, but 2. is going to fit better in many circumstances. But it's also
harder, therefore needs more practice. You don't have to be in a cockpit
to practice both design and execution of an SA scan pattern that you can
use in flight.
Keith's paper on the IP/PCT theory also highlights the role of knowledge
in safety factors. I checked this out by re-reading some accident
reports looking for critical knowledge deficiencies in the key players.
Doing that threw new light onto learning strategies that could have
prevented those accidents. (This slant to incident analysis would make
an excellent exercise paradigm for crm training.)
Like Ashleigh, I am a fan of distance education (DE). That's not only
because it suits Australia and pilots in remote areas, unsupervised, but
as it requires self-control and self-discipline. Practising that is very
good for aviators. (My 'basic pilot' program is in DE format.)
So maybe where things aren't working out, it's more because training
designers aren't using enough of the learning laws, and/or aren't using
them well enough, than there being any fundamental deficiency in what
they tell us. Take motivation. Do all pilots leap out of bed on 'crm (or
LOFT, or AQP) day' eager to get to the session, determined to hoover up
every shred of value from it, insisting on longer, tougher, problems,
begging for more?
Then there's the Law of the English speaker in Paris. "If they don't
understand, SPEAK LOUDER." I've heard about a lot of crm programs that
owe more to that one than anything Vince wrote about.
I didn't know that bit about the cats, though. Curiously apt, I reckon.
Getting airline pilots in these parts to get their heads around some of
this stuff is just like herding cats.
Cheers
Doug