Instructor Report: Keys to adult learning

Respect their experience. Learning occurs when students believe their teachers respect and support their individual needs. Adults need to feel that their abilities and life achievements are acknowledged and valid. The best CFIs understand that each student desires to have life experiences validated by his or her flight instructors. Emphasize to your students that prior experience in any domain can be relevant, and it can help them in their learning.

Hear the conversation. To be accessible and personable to students, ask about their hobbies, careers, and personal relationships. This demonstrates that you are interested in their lives beyond the airport. It also allows you to see whether students are happy or frustrated in their outside lives. Sometimes even the best lesson plan won’t be good enough for a student who has had a rough day at work or with family members. What an adult student deals with before coming in for a flight lesson might be surprising.

Give them the power of choice. Student pilots don’t naturally get to make a lot of choices on their own. It’s hard for adults to feel any freedom or autonomy in the airplane or flight school environment. The student wants to love flying—and you, the teacher, certainly want the student to love it, too. Give the autonomy students desire by offering to allow them to make a choice of short-field or soft-field landings one lesson, for example. Even if they don’t choose anything different, allowing freedom of choice stimulates and motivates. Students must be able to think on their own; don’t make every decision for them.

Accommodate age-related changes to learning. Adult learners also may need you to compensate for aging. Aging brings physical complications that can affect learning. Many of the issues in older adults are not related to intelligence, but rather degraded physical abilities. However, we know from research that although the speed of learning decreases with age, the depth of learning actually increases. Because of previous experiences, older adults learn with a greater intensity when they involve themselves.

Respect their other responsibilities. Learning is, unfortunately, secondary for many students. Aviation is expensive, and adults typically work a regular job while training. We must understand that for adults, the student role is typically a minor role. Sometimes, the reality of flight instruction is that there are limits to the hours in a day, as well as the amount of energy and stamina.

The best way to fail an adult student and have him dislike the aviation education environment is to treat him as if he doesn’t belong, and he isn’t experienced enough to become a pilot. Those of us in aviation come from a wide variety of backgrounds. If we’re considerate to the adults—our biggest population of learners—we can make the learning enjoyable and successful for everyone.

It only takes one flight instructor to treat an adult as an ignorant underling before the student is turned off to aviation forever. Don’t ignore the individual’s need to be validated, even if the student is your last of the day.

Author Austin Walden is a flight instructor and teaches educational psychology.

Adult learning checklist

Validation

• In what ways have you validated the student’s cognitive, physical, emotional, or social needs?
• Are there needs that must be met that the student hasn’t vocalized?

Listening

• Consider adjusting your lesson plan if any extra baggage has come up throughout the day.
• Listen closely for any hidden meaning in the student’s words.

Freedom and autonomy

• What choices have you given for today’s lesson?
• Does the student have the ability to experiment in a safe environment?

Compensation for aging

• Find ways to ensure the cockpit is adequately lighted and that the student can hear you.
• How have you encouraged your student to integrate aviation into past knowledge?

Secondary role of learning

• Have you allowed for flexibility (time, requirements, homework) in your flight instruction?
• Don’t be disappointed when jobs and families create obstacles for the student.
• Accept that adult learners will be preoccupied at times with other roles and responsibilities.