Have you ever felt like a nagging flight instructor during the postflight briefing?
“You need to watch your airspeed on that short field takeoff…you have to do a better job of controlling your heading during the stall recovery….”
After the third critical comment or so, your student starts to look like a chastised puppy, head down and tail tucked. But these things have to be said in order to help our students improve, right? Isn’t that our duty as flight instructors to point out our students’ deficiencies so they can grow into the safe, skilled pilots they are meant to be? Well, maybe that’s not our job at all.
The FAA says there is a better way to approach the evaluation and critique of our students’ flying capabilities. The Aviation Instructor’s Handbook presents a technique called “collaborative assessment” in which the instructor facilitates a student’s assessment of his or her own performance in light of a set of preestablished standards. Student-based critiques are good for several reasons.
First, lessons will become a lot more enjoyable for both of you when it feels as if you are on the same team, working together toward a common goal. Second, and more important, helping your student develop sound habits of self-assessment is a critical skill of a safety-minded pilot. It will help you feel less like the big bad wolf and more like a helpful mentor on your student’s self-led path to becoming a successful, competent pilot.
In order for a student to be able to accurately assess his or her own performance, you must lay out a clear set of standards before you ever leave the ground. If a student is preparing for solo, those standards should look different than if one is preparing for a checkride. This is where a well-organized syllabus comes in handy, complete with lesson objectives and end-of-flight performance standards. Tell your students that in order to get your solo signoff, you expect very specific margins of altitude and airspeed, as well as safe decision making. By the time the student approaches the checkride, he or she should be well versed with the practical test standards and understand that the goal of every maneuver is to perform well within those boundaries.
Once you actually make it to the air, however, it’s time to scale back the instructor-led communication so you can function more as observer and safety pilot, allowing your students to focus as they work through the lesson. After each maneuver, ask your students how they thought it went. Then—only if they don’t come to the conclusions on their own—you can offer some guidance to help improve the second attempt.
Although it may be tough to do for us talkative instructors, sometimes the biggest lessons occur when we allow students to see the natural outcome of their decisions in the airplane (provided those natural outcomes still have you arriving home safe for dinner). For example, we all know it’s tempting on a cross-country flight to help students locate waypoints and airports before they pass them by. But how much more of a learning experience would it be if you let them pass that airport, and maybe even get a little lost, before you guide them through the process of finding their way again? That way, you don’t have to harp on the importance of a well-prepared flight plan; they can come to that conclusion from seeing it firsthand.
When the flight is over, the real learning can begin. Start by asking your students open-ended questions to facilitate the discussion: How do you think the flight went? What things did you do well? What areas need improvement?
Listen to your student, and pay special attention to the areas where his or her perceptions differ from your own. If your student thinks he’s ready to solo, but you still have concerns about his safety, you may have to ask more specific questions relating to the performance standards in order to guide your student to the appropriate conclusions. Remember that the sign of any great teacher is a self-sufficient student, who no longer has to rely on the instructor in order to complete the task.
Helping your students to become more self-aware by recognizing their own weaknesses and deficiencies may be the most important skill you can teach them, far more important than nailing that short-field landing or perfectly maintaining altitude during a steep turn. And what’s more, you’ll never have to hear your student say, “Why flight instructor, what big teeth you have!”
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