Course: CFII FOI’s

Learning Theories
Behaviorism: Response to stimuli. Monkey see monkey do. The theory assumes 3 things:

1) All humans learn the same way;

2) All humans will respond to the environment in predictable ways;
3) Behaviorism can be learned.

There are 2 types of behaviorism:

1) Operant behavior: initiated voluntarily by the individual. Turning on a fuel pump, performing a
checklist, going around etc.
2) Respondant behavior: initiated involuntarily. Flinching when somebody is punching you, blinking
your eyes at a bright light etc.

If you taxi fast, your student is going to taxi fast. If you praise him immediately after a maneuver correctly
performed, the student can clearly see what is right. They will therefore repeat it.

Give your student reinforcement

Positive reinforcement: reward is given for correct behavior. The behavior is strengthened.
Negative reinforcement: instructor criticize student for bad landings. When student lands well, instructor
does not point out any error.
Punishment: instructor shouts at student when he forgets something.
Extinction: a good student receives always praises by instructor. When student knows he didn’t study, he
does not receive any praise.

Cognitive: it’s not a matter of an outward behavior anymore, it’s about what a person thinks, feels,
understands. It involves the mental process, decision making, problem solving that are very difficult to
observe in student.

If we ask student to explain how and why he did something, we can gain insights into his mental process.

Sensory register: acts a filter that separates the important information from the unimportant information.
While you’re reading this, you’re aware of the table underneath you book, the walls around you, the chair
you’re sit on etc. However you’re paying attention only at the words!

This process is called selective attention. If you’re student while flying does not listen what you tell him,
selective attention is being exercised. Reduce his workload!

A good preflight can prepare you’re student sensory register!

Nicolò Pomarolli Phoenix East Aviation 10/04/2023

Course: CFII FOI’s

Characteristics of learning
Purposeful: there has to be a purpose for your student to learn something.
The most effective way is to promise rewards: financial gain, favorable self image, group approval.
“If you study for your orals, you’ll spend less money and will finish quick!”

Examples:
A student that wants to become an airline pilot will approach the training differently than one that only
wants his private pilot license.
Learning Chinese. Would I want to learn Chinese? NO! But..what if there’s a job offer in China. YES!

Result of an experience: student has to experience tasks first hand.

Example: You can talk to him about the stall for hours during orals, but he’ll never fully understand it until
he flies it and experiences it in first hand.
Same with the mental process: if you want to teach decision making and judgment then let your student
make decisions and see the results.

Multifaceted: student will learn better if all the senses are involved. Student will learn better if he goes to
the oral, watches a video, goes on AOPA, sees it in the airplane, talks about it with friends etc.

Example:
The “STALL”: you see the nose high attitude, feel the buffeting, hear the horn, see the stall light.
Cooking: how well could you cook if you could only see? What if you could also smell, hear the fried oil,
taste it? Much better right?
Engine: study in class, go see the parts, watch video, touch it!

Active process: student has to be involved, has to be interested in the topic, has to be willing to learn.
Students do not soak up knowledge like a sponge absorbs water. Even if he says he understood, you can’t
assume he’ll remember. Retention involves reading, writing, thinking, and doing!

Principles of learning
Readiness: student has to be ready to learn. Has to have his notebooks, his headphones, has to be feeling
good physically (IMSAFE), and most important mentally.

Example:
Tragic loss in the family: student will not be focused.
Student that is moving and fatigued.
Student that has a broken car and a lot of life problems.

Exercise: practice makes perfect. The more you study, the more you research, the better you’re going to
be at it. Be aware that too much is also bad  attempting to land 15 times might be too stressful on
student.

Nicolò Pomarolli Phoenix East Aviation 10/04/2023

Course: CFII FOI’s

Effect: learning is strengthened when it is associated with a pleasant experience.

Always try to create a little challenge for your student. Starting easy and ending hardly. If he does it right,
he’ll be satisfied. Your praise will also make him be willing to come fly the day after!

Primacy: things learned first create strong and unshakable impression.

Example: Raul first learnt wrongly Vx as best rate of climb and Vy as best angle of climb. Now, after so many
years he still struggles to remember which one is which.

Intensity: intense, vivid and dramatic experiences will be remembered best. You don’t need to create
frightening situations for your student to remember, just personal challenges!

Example: An engine failure will be remembered for ever.

Flying into actual IMC and shooting an approach to the minimums. Intense!
Landing without a landing gear.

Recency: things most recently learned are best remembered. It’s easy for student to remember a
procedure immediately after you demonstrate it, but without additional review, it will be soon forgotten!

Levels of learning
Rote: memorizing without understanding. V speeds, associating numbers with letters.

Understanding: actually comprehending the meaning. Understanding that Vx is the best angle of climb.

Application: applying the learnings. You actually go out and see that the best rate of climb will take you
higher in the smallest distance.

Correlation: combining all the above with other learnings and experiences. Realizing that in a short field
takeoff, Vx is the most effective way to clear the obstacle and save your life!

Theories of Retention
Association: student will recall better if he learns something he can associate to.
Use real world example, metaphor ! I tend to remember each situation where I learnt something.

Senses: if you learn something through the use of all the senses you can retrieve it better! The more senses
you engage, the higher chance the student will learn.

Attitude: a positive attitude of both student and flight instructor will make the lesson more effective.
Student learns and remembers only what he wishes to know. Rewarding objectives motivate the student!

Praise: responses that give a pleasurable return tend to be repeated.

Repetition: practice makes perfect. Three or four times repetition provide maximum effect! If you repeat
it every day, you fall into automaticity that will be good for workload management

Nicolò Pomarolli Phoenix East Aviation 10/04/2023

Course: CFII FOI’s

Learning Physical Skills

Physical skill: doesn’t just involve using muscle. Coordination and motor skills!

Example: Student that when steering turns the yoke instead of using the rudder.
Applying rudder in a turn.

Desire to learn: student needs to be willing to improve.

This student will not only recognize his mistakes, but will also make an effort to correct them. A student
that doesn’t want to improve, will most likely repeat the same errors.

Patterns to follow: clear step by step process.

Example: How hard would it be to do S turns without ever demonstrating one?

Landing: first you learn straight and level flight, then constant speed descent, then landing. It’s a progress!

Progress follow a pattern: Building block technique. When you learn something new, performance
improves rapidly at first. After a while progress slows and gets into a learning plateau: “a temporary
leveling off of the learning curve.”
It’s important that as flight instructors we motivate our student during this demotivating periods.

Knowledge of results: keeping student aware of their progress.

Some students will be able to identify their own errors, some others will need your help to determine their
mistakes. We have to give them feedback as soon as possible!

Performing the skill: preparing a flight plan. Performing the stall maneuver and the recovery.

Application of the skill: knowing when, where and how to use that skill. If suddenly on approach we hear
the stall warning, we know exactly what to do to recover.

Duration of lecture: 45 minutes would be best. Depend on the student.

Example: student fresh out of high school can stay in ground school, do orals and fly because he’s used to
work hard. For some others a 2 hour oral is already too much. Also…Some people can do a 2 hour oral but
simply they don’t wish to do it!

Evaluation vs Critique: a critique is a corrective suggestion. Evaluation is the comparison to the Pts
standards.

Example: doing steep turns student struggles with the controls. A critique would be: “trim the aircraft!”
The evaluation is if he did the maneuvers within Pts standards.

Nicolò Pomarolli Phoenix East Aviation 10/04/2023

Course: CFII FOI’s

Theories of forgetting
Repression: experiences that are unpleasant or produce anxiety may be buried into the subconscious part
of the mind and cannot be recalled! It’s unconscious! Sigmund Freud theory.

Example: I can’t remember the first time I kissed my ex girlfriend because I didn’t really care.
When an accident happens, and subconsciously you forget about it.

Interference: occurs when something is forgotten because a certain experience has overshadowed it, or
when learning similar things has intervened.

Example: if you learnt something in high school and now you learnt it another way, it will be hard to recall!
Material that is not fully understood is subject to interference.

Disuse or fading: difficulty in recalling facts after years. When we try to remember something, we are not
recalling a single piece of information. We are recalling the breakdown of neural pathways, the routes!

Example: studying for a test. After the test, if those information are not retrieved and the material is not
studied again, the pathways of that information will slowly fade away.

Basis of all learning

Perception: occurs when meaning is given to sensations.

Example: Hearing a landing gear horn while doing maneuvers. Student will get used to hear it, so when he
comes to land without gear the horn is not associated with anything. The horn has no meaning until the
student understands its purpose.

Insights: mental grouping of perception into meaningful wholes. Creating insights for our student is our
major responsibility.

Example: a stall can be associated with high pitch, slow airspeed, stall horn, stall lights. All of these
perceptions are attributed to the stall! Sometimes insights can be false, such as associating the stall only to
slow airspeed and not to the increasing angle of attack.

Motivation: student motivation is of major importance towards learning. A student has to be willing to
learn, has to be interested, has to see a goal, has to be motivated to fight for the objective. Without
motivation there is little chance of success and recalling of information.

Nicolò Pomarolli Phoenix East Aviation 10/04/2023

Course: CFII FOI’s

Domains of learning
Cognitive domain (connects to “levels of learning”): learning concerned to knowledge and thought
processing. A student will change his prospective if active thinking has occurred in his mind. Knowledge is
gained throughout a ground school, reading at home about airspaces, listening to preflight briefing, calling
the FSS for weather, preparing the flight plane.

Example: Flight plan: identifying a route, comparing it to others. Evaluating stops for refueling, evaluating
the weight and balance and CG, evaluating positions of MOA or restricted areas, choosing smart waypoints,
evaluating an alternative course of action. All of this, is cognitive thinking!

Affective domain: focuses on feelings, attitudes, personal beliefs, values, culture, background. These
factors affect the choices student make. Safety, judgment and decision making are the primary areas
concerned by the affective domain. How do we evaluate a positive attitude towards flight safety?

Psychomotor domain (connects to “learning physical skills”): flying an airplane involves physical skills,
coordination, a “touch” for the perfect landing.

Example: preflight an airplane. Setting a GPS. Landing. Flying an IAP

Human needs
Physical: biological needs like sleep, food, water, bathroom. A hungry or tired student won’t perform well.

Safety: all humans have to feel safe, have to have a place to live and feel comfortable. Enhancing flight
safety will mitigates feelings of insecurity.

Social: humans are like wolves, need to be part of a group. Need to find friends and not feel lonely or
homesick. Giving and receiving love.

Ego: student self esteem and self confidence. Student reputation, recognition by others. Appreciation and
respect by his friends.

Self fulfillment: knowing you own potential for continue development. Greatest challenge for flight
instructor to see your student self fulfillment.
Think of when you passed your commercial, I was excited and immediately wanted to start CFII.
“I passed the stage, I’m good at this, I can really do this.”

Defense mechanism
Compensation: disguise the weak areas emphasizing a more positive one.

Example: Instructor: “Your steep turns were not good today!”. Student: “Yes, but my stalls were amazing!”

Projection: blaming others. You blame your instructor in a stage to justify your mistakes.

Nicolò Pomarolli Phoenix East Aviation 10/04/2023

Course: CFII FOI’s

Rationalization: students creates subconsciously excuses in their head to justify their behavior that would
be unacceptable. They make those excuses plausible and acceptable to themselves and they strongly
believe in them.

Denial of reality: student refuses to acknowledge reality.

Example: After a very bad dangerous landing the instructor says: “Your last landing was very bad”. The
student says: “What are you talking about? It was alright!”

Reaction formation: “who cares what other people think” kind of attitude, to cover up feelings of
loneliness and hunger of acceptance. Faking opposite belief because the true one cause anxiety.

Flight: daydreaming. Mental escape from problems. During orals you’re student looks at nowhere and
thinks of a better world without paying attention. The world of desire and world of reality can become so
confused that the dreamer can’t distinguish one from the other. This is called fantasy!

Aggression: anger is normal, everybody gets angry occasionally. People shout, swear, slam a door and
show aggression. After a cooling off period, they may see those actions as childish. In a classroom or an
airplane such extreme behavior is infrequent because students are taught to repress their emotions,
aggressiveness can be very subtle. So, they may ask irrelevant question, refuse to participate, answer
quickly, leave without saying anything.

Resignation: students become frustrated when they see they can’t understand or do something. This
frustration can cause them to lose interest and accept defeat.

Teaching process
Preparation: organization and study of the material related to the lesson that will be presented.

Presentation: presentation of the material, depending if it’s an oral with one person, a ground school
lesson. Can be computer based material, a video, a scenario, e group learning lesson.

Application: the student is able to explain the concepts back to the instructor, or is able to perform the
certain task in the airplane, or using the flight computer.
NOTE: it’s very important that we correct the student maneuver or operation because it has to be the right
ay the first few times. Otherwise, faulty habits are difficult to correct.

Review: debrief what has been covered during the lesson. Let your student demonstrate how well he
understood something. It will tell you how well he know is, and how well you taught it.
It’s important that we give feedback. It’s difficult for student to get a clear picture of their progress.
Students compete against the other pilots but they can’t see how other are doing, so they rely totally on
the instructor feedback.

Evaluation: based on objectives and goals that were established in the lesson plan. (Pts standards)

Ways to evaluate
Performance test: flight checkride, or stage.

Nicolò Pomarolli Phoenix East Aviation 10/04/2023

Course: CFII FOI’s

Oral quizzing: skillful use of questions. Lead off question to start, and after the discussion developed 
follow up questions.

Written test: such as the FAA written, or pre-solo written.

Written test
Comprehensive: measures everything in equal proportions.

Usable: clear and concise questions, easy to read and understand

Reliable: improvement in score each time the test is taken

Valid: measures what it is supposed to measure

Discriminative: Differentiate between skills in student. Should have a high degree of discrimination to see
the difference among students that are both high and low in achievement of the course objective.

Example: a student might be very good at FAA written, but bad at explaining in the oral. Or student might
be good in flying, and not very good with theory.

Critique
Comprehensive: covers the good and the bad points, without dwelling on the errors. Doesn’t have to be
very long. After the student understands his mistakes, move on.

Objective: focuses only on student’s performance, without personal opinions, prejudices, biases and
dislikes. On the other hand, be careful not to over sympathize with a student and skip over his mistakes
because you have a certain expectation.

Well organized: start with something positive, go over the weak areas and end the critique with
something positive. Learning is strengthened by a pleasant or satisfying experience.

Flexible: consider your student entire performance and the kind of person he is. Critique should be
adequate to his personality. Also, some students have good and bad days! A good student may perform
bad, a bad student may have a great day.

Acceptable: student must accept his flight instructor. Respect him, admire him before he can accept a
critique.

Constructive: praise student for what he did well, and use those abilities to improve the weak areas.
Instructor should always provide corrective action to the student.

Thoughtful: be aware of your student’s feelings, his self esteem, recognition and approval from others.
With shy student, do the critique in private!

Specific: generalization is useless to the student. Don’t say: “your landings were very bad”. Student won’t
know how to improve. Say: “you were at 75kts instead of 65kts on final”. The student knows exactly what
the problem was.

Nicolò Pomarolli Phoenix East Aviation 10/04/2023

Course: CFII FOI’s

Question to avoid
Do you understand? : he’ll say just yes or no. And a lot of the times student say yes without having fully
understood what the instructor told them.

Oversized: How does an airplane work? Simply too much.

Puzzle: What is the first action you should take if you are in a conventional gear airplane with a weak right
brake swerving left in a right crosswind during full flap, power on wheel landing! Too many answers.

Yes/no: useless.

Bewildering: very confusing.

Irrelevant: instructor and student are talking about weather and suddenly the instructor asks about the
engine.

Toss up: in an emergency should you squawk 7700 or pick a landing spot?

Catch question: tricky, useless, whatever the student answer is it will upset him.

Have you got any question?

Teaching methods
Lecture: like the seminar. You stand in a class and deliver information.

Group/cooperative: broken into small groups. Heterogeneous, work as a team towards objective.

Guided discussion: instructor teaches a class with active participation of student. It’s important to use
questions: usually a leadoff question and follow up questions. (overhead, direct, reverse, relay, rhetorical).

Demonstrated performance: instructor says-instructor does, student says-instructor does, student says-
student does, student does-instructor evaluates.

Scenario based: we simulate a real world scenario to see how student would deal with certain situation.

Computer based: faa written, use of video, web courses and tests.

Factors affecting perception:

Physical Organism: all the senses must be used. Pilots need to see, hear, feel, and respond to ATC.

Element of threat: fear and anxiety narrow the perceptual field. When showing a stall to the student, he
will be scared and will tend to focus all his attention on what makes him afraid.

Time and opportunity: it takes time and opportunity to perceive. A student might land very well the first
time. But landing will always be different! Experience will make you better! In just 2 flights you can’t know
everything about flying. It takes time.

Nicolò Pomarolli Phoenix East Aviation 10/04/2023

Course: CFII FOI’s

Self concept: student self image  confident or insecure. If a student believes in himself, he’ll perceive
better. If I don’t believe I can do it, I won’t do it! It’s how I see myself.

Needs: basic human needs. IMSAFE checklist, plus food and sleep etc

Goals and values: perceptions depend on a person goals, beliefs and values. Some student go quick
through the course because they have a stated personal goal, or maybe for money issues, some others are
simply sent by their parents.

Example: at a soccer game, spectators can see an infraction differently depending on which team they
support.

Instructor responsibilities
Flight test recommendation: instructors are responsible for signing off student for the practical tests. An
instructor must have flown 3 hours in with a student within the past 60 days.

Endorsements: listed in AC61-65E

Aircraft checkout: making sure the aircraft is airworthy for student XC solo.

Refresher training: instructor should come back over the areas covered earlier in the training to make
sure those are not forgotten.

Supervise: instructors have the responsibility for approving solo and supervising it.

Instructor tasks
Help student learn:
- learning should be enjoyable, not necessarily easy
- learning should be interesting, when defined objectives are stated
- learning to fly should be an adventure, an experiment, an exploration
- learning should be suited to the individual student, led to performance within pts standards .<
- safety first!

Emphasize the good: show the student your passion for aviation. Show them how fun it is, emphasize the
love for your job. Show them the good aspects before emphasizing the negative aspects.
A student that is afraid won’t learn well.

Adequate instruction: a good pilot is always learning. A good instructor should still study and put effort
into teaching the students. Students tend to lose motivation if the instructor is not adequately prepared.

Demand standards: instructor must analyze their performance as well as their students. Allowing a
student to get by with substandard performance is not providing competent instruction. It reflect poorly on
you, as well as your student.

Nicolò Pomarolli Phoenix East Aviation 10/04/2023

Course: CFII FOI’s

Instructor professionalism
Sincere: straightforward and honest, without hiding anything or talking behind other people’s back.

Acceptance of you student:

- prejudices and bias have no place in the cockpit
- instructor must accept student’s faults and weaknesses
- Student deserve respect
- You are working towards the same goal! Work as a team!

Demeanor: be calm, disciplined and predictable. Don’t be cool one day, and the other day stressed and
angry because of your problems. Erratic behavior and changing attitudes should not be displayed.

Safety: always promote safety first. Safety emphasized by instructor have a last longing effect on student.
Observance of all rules and regulation is important to pass on to student. Promotion of safety will mitigate
student fears.

Appropriate language: use always the correct terminology, student pick up words, concepts or acronyms
that are new to them. Don’t swear or yell, this can cause your student to lose respect for an instructor.

Personal appearance: take care of your image and be professional. Wear the uniform! Wear a tie! Take
care of your personal hygiene.

Self improvement: a good pilot is always learning. Every time we teach something to our student, it’s an
opportunity for us to teach that topic better and better. It will gain us experience! An instructor should
have the same motivation as student towards improvement. We can always get better! Always!

Minimize student frustration

Inform: keep students up to date with progress. Tell them what they should expect!

Admit errors: great sign of humbleness. You’re student will appreciate it more than, meaningless answers.

Motivate: emphasize the positive, motivate them!

Be consistent: if you draw the pitot static system in one way, keep doing it the same way.

Approach student as individuals: treat them all the same, and make sure you

Credit: praise your student for what he did well. Laugh together, congratulate him for his success!

Criticize: make sure you provide feedback. Make sure he knows what goes on with his training, and how
he is doing. He relies a lot on your opinion and advice!

Nicolò Pomarolli Phoenix East Aviation 10/04/2023

Course: CFII FOI’s

Memory
It’s the ability of a person to encode, store and retrieve information. Memory has 3 components:

1) Sensory register
2) Short term memory
3) Long term memory

- The sensory register acts as a filter that separates the important information from the unimportant
information. While you’re reading this, you are aware of the desk underneath the book, of the walls around
you etc, but you’re focused on understanding what you’re reading. This process is called selective
attention. Red lights on an instrument panel are an example. When a red light flashes, it needs you’re
attention.

When student does not hear what you tell him because he’s doing a certain maneuver. Selective attention
is being exercised. We should reduce his workload prior to communicate an idea with him.

- In the short term memory, conscious thoughts take place. The information is processed and sent to long
term memory for storage as well as retrieved from it.
It takes 5-10 seconds for the data to be processed and moved to long term memory. If the process is
interrupted, we have 20 seconds to get back to that information, otherwise it will be forgotten.
Short term memory has limited capacity of about 7 bits or chucks of information. A phone number is an
example. Visual and auditory information are best processed. For example watching a video with a verbal
explanation in the background.

Short term memory transfers information to long term memory by two processes:

1) Rehearsing: repeating numbers over and over. Rote learning!

2) Coding: relating an information to a concept that makes sense.

- Long term memory is used for long term storage and can have a duration of a lifetime. Information are
retrieved from long term memory, but remember that memory is a reconstruction of an experience and not
an exact recall.

Transfer of learning
People interprets new things based on what they already know. Sometimes, the knowledge or skill acquired
in the past may aid students. This is referred as positive transfer of learning.

On the other hand, if previous learning interferes with student understanding of the current task, a
negative transfer of learning takes place.

With our student, our syllabus should follow a certain precise pattern. What is learnt today should be used
towards what will be learnt tomorrow in a meaningful sequence.

Nicolò Pomarolli Phoenix East Aviation 10/04/2023

Course: CFII FOI’s

Human behavior
The study of human behavior is an attempt to explain how and why human function and act the way they
do. Very complex topic! Education, culture, beliefs, values and individual experience affect the way we
behave, but certain factors will cause people to act in predictable ways.

Speaking in public for example, is one of the modern humans fear. Some people will react differently to
fears, but all of the will have an increase in breathing rate and heartbeat. How we handle that fear depends
on previous individual experiences.

Human behavior is also defined as the attempt to satisfy certain needs. The need for food, the need to
sleep, the need to feel appreciated. Hunger will make a person do anything! The sense of loneliness and the
need to be part of a group might for example can cause a person to be jealous or depressed.

Communication process
Three basic elements:

1) Source
2) Symbol used to communicate the message
3) Receiver

The source is the person that is sending the information. If the material comes from a textbook, manual or
internet then that’s the reference.
First the source should use language that is meaningful to the listeners. Second, you can consciously or
subconsciously reveal your attitudes to your students. Third, the message must be accurate and
stimulating. If you’re enthusiastic about teaching, then your student will have a more positive attitude
toward the subject.

The symbols can be words, videos, pictures, experiments. Hearing and seeing works perfectly.
Be sure that your student understands what you’re telling them. Don’t use acronyms, slang, abbreviation or
specific aviation words if your student does not already know them.

The receiver is the listener. Culture, background, motivation, attitudes will change the prospective of the
explanations, as well as age and gender. Don’t take for granted that if you’re student has a college degree
he will advance quick in aviation. Also some culture are sensitive to certain words and mannerism.

Look for feedback. “I don’t understand what you mean”, “can you clarify that?” If student does not say
anything, ask them to repeat the concepts.
Keep in mind that in order to be a good teacher, you must be an effective listener.

Barriers to effective communication

Lack of common experience: greatest single barrier to effective communication. Words don’t carry
meanings between people like airplanes transport cargo. Each person has a different perspective of the
words depending on the his previous experience and culture. It’s essential that our students understands
exactly what we mean.

Nicolò Pomarolli Phoenix East Aviation 10/04/2023

Course: CFII FOI’s

Confusion between symbol and symbolized objects: “takeoff power” could be understood as take the
power to idle, while some other could understand is as full power.
Student: “Should I turn to the left?” Instructor: “Right”  In this case the situation is ambiguous.

Overuse of abstractions: abstractions are terms that don’t carry specific meanings. Such as “aircraft”! Each
person will think of something different, but if you say “B747” the students will know exactly in their mind
what you’re talking about.

Interference: physiological, environmental and psychological.

Physiological are factors such as hearing loss, loss of visual acuity, injury or illness.
Environmental are caused by external factors like noise level, radio transmission etc.
Psychological is related to the mood of instructor and student. Lack of motivation and or fear.

Problem based learning

Problems encountered in real life that force student to reach real world situations. Real world scenarios
and collaborative problem solving (2 or more people working together)!

1) There’s no single solution to the problem.

2) Stimulates student to decision making and situational awareness.
3) Are open ended and not limited to one answer
4) Are connected to previously learnt material
5) Reflect lesson objective

Collaborative assessment
The purpose is to stimulate growth in the student’s thought process and behaviors. It’s a comparison
between the student self assessment and the instructor assessment about a certain scenario. The student
will be asked about real world tasks, meaningful application of skills and competencies  critical thinking!

Usually done through a real world scenarios using open ended questions.

Four steps to guide student self assessment:

1) Replay: ask student to verbally replay the flight or procedure. Monitor his perceptions and discuss
why they do not match.
2) Reconstruct: identifies the jey things that student would have, could have or should have done
differently during the flight or procedure.
3) Reflect: talk about the event. What was the most important thing you learned today? Was it easy?
Was it hard? Were you within pts standards?
4) Redirect: help the student use today’s lesson for future experiences.

Nicolò Pomarolli Phoenix East Aviation 10/04/2023

Course: CFII FOI’s

Planning instructional activity

Developing objectives and standards for a course of training:

A course of training is a series of studies leading to a certificate, graduation, degree or license.

There are two different types of objectives:
1) Performance based objectives to define exactly what needs to be and how during each lesson.
2) Decision based objectives to teach critical thinking, aeronautical decision making, risk management.

Defining levels of learning should be part of the objective, applying to one or more of the domains:
cognitive (knowledge and thought process), affective (attitude, beliefs, values) and psychomotor (physical
skills). It’s easier to define standards for cognitive and psychomotor domains, since it’s about knowledge
and performance. Standards for the affective domain regarding mentality and judgment is more difficult.

Standards are tied to objectives since they include the description of the desired knowledge. When student
performs up to standard, he has learnt!

Performance based objectives

Used to describe the desired performance of the student. This will provide a way of stating what
performance level is desired of a student before he’s allowed to progress to the next stage of instruction.
Objectives must be written, and should be clear, measurable, repeatable. They must mean the same thing
to any reader. Performance based objectives consist of three elements: description of the skill, conditions,
and criteria.

Description of the skill: Explains the outcome of the lesson. Should be easy to understand with clear and
concise terms.

Conditions: the rules under which the skil is demonstrated. “Navigate from point A to B” is not specific
enough. Conditions narrows the objective: “Using sectional chart, flight computer, and G1000 resources of
the Cessna 172., navigate from point A to point B”.

Criteria: the standards of completion. It should be clearly stated so that there is no question wheter the
objective has been met or not. For example: “Navigation from point A to B should be within 5 minutes of
planned arrival time, and cruise altitude should be maintained within 200ft”. Use the PTS to help you!

Decision based objectives

Designed to develop pilot judgment and ADM skills since improper pilot decision is the number one cause
of all GA accidents. Usually done through a dynamic scenario. It involves a higher level of learning and
application. It will require students to gather information for a cross country flight plan, emergency
procedures, and other flight skills.

Nicolò Pomarolli Phoenix East Aviation 10/04/2023

Course: CFII FOI’s

Building blocks of learning

Identify blocks of learning  building a pyramid, based on student. Does student have previous
experience? Does student have an helicopter license?
For a private pilot should have three major blocks:
- training for first solo;
- training for solo cross country;
- training for private pilot license final exam.

Each part has smaller block that are integral part of the structure such as straight and level flight, basic
maneuvers, airport operation, atc communication, traffic pattern operation, pre-solo written, emergency
operation. Each single block will be essential for student first solo

Aiming at a big goal may seem unobtainable. Completion of each smaller block will motivate the student
and boost his self-confidence.

Training syllabus
It’s a summary of a course of training! It’s a practical guide for instructors to make sure the training is
accomplished in a logical order, and that all of the requirements are completed and documented.
Should be well organized, comprehensive and adapted to each student. (Aldo’s end of course notes)

Part 141 has its own syllabus. A part 61 instructor will have to make one for each of his students or use a
well-design commercial product already made by training manuals or FAA.

Every syllabus should be organized in lesson, and should stress on well-defined objectives and standards. It
should be separated between ground and flight lessons, in a logical order.

It’s a guide! Therefore it can be altered to suit the progress of the student and demands of special
circumstances. Don’t keep going with training if he has not fulfilled the requirements for the individual
lesson! Syllabus should be flexible to adapt to weather, aircraft availability in order to not suspend training.

Every lesson should relate directly or indirectly with safety, decision making, judgment. The student should
have a copy of the syllabus.

Lesson plans
It’s an outline for a single instructional activity. It’s a lesson taught to the instructor and then to the
student. That’s why it must be written and not mental! A lesson plan tells the instructor what to do, in what
order, and what procedure to follow. The characteristics of a well-planned lesson plan are:

1) Unity: each lesson should be about a certain topic and not be general covering 10 different things.
2) Content: each lesson should contain new material related to the previous lesson. A short review
will be useful!
3) Scope: do not present too much material that will be confusing. Too little will result in inefficiency.
4) Practicality: an oral lesson will be based differently than a classroom lesson or flight lesson.
5) Flexibility: lesson plan can be changed. Include blank spaces for add-on material.

Nicolò Pomarolli Phoenix East Aviation 10/04/2023

Course: CFII FOI’s

6) Instructional steps: every lesson should have the 4 steps of preparation, presentation, application,
review and evaluation.

Scenario Based Training

Improper pilot decision are the cause of most of accidents in light single and twin engine aircraft. The
purpose of SBT is to improve decision making skills by creating real world scenarios where the students is
required to make timely decision exercising sound judgment, using the resources available.

Human learn better, the more realistic the situation is.

Instructor responsibilities

Providing adequate instruction

Analyzing student personality, thinking and ability. All students are different, and a different approach must
be utilized by the flight instructor. Incorrect analysis may lead to incorrect type of instruction.

Some students can be:

- Shy and timid and can’t explain themselves even though they well understood the topic. In this case the
flight instructor should boost student self confidence.
- Self confident student, not very smart. He thinks he can do anything but he’s not quite yet ready. We
should try to demand more, and explain topics in different ways to make sure he understands.
- Fast learning students can be a challenge for the instructor too. They make few mistakes, and assume that
its correction is not important. Such overconfidence may result in faulty performance.

When student progress is slow due to discouragement and lack of self confidence, smaller sub goals should
be applied to make it easier for him. In “S turns” for example, you may begin with consideration to
headings only, introducing every subpart one at a time.

Standards of performance
Using the PTS. The PTS is a testing book, not a teaching book. Standards can’t be attained right away, but
with time and development of smaller blocks of learning, performance within PTS standards will happen.
Don’t introduce the minimum acceptable standards for passing a check ride when introducing a lesson. Do
it later on, towards the last 3 hours preparation for the check ride.

Emphasizing the positive

Instructors have tremendous influence on student perceptions. The way we approach flying, the attitudes
we display will give positive or negative impressions to the student.
Especially at the first flight, don’t talk about emergencies or stalls or spins because the student will not
want to fly!!! Go to an airport and come back and show him how safe, fun and smooth the ride was.
Nothing in aviation must be frightening. With time, after normal procedures, emergency procedures can be
easily explained to the better self confident student.

Nicolò Pomarolli Phoenix East Aviation 10/04/2023

Course: CFII FOI’s

Teaching process
Preparation
The flight instructor researches and gets himself ready for the lesson he will have to explain. He researches
on textbooks, on the web, in a library etc depending if he will teach an oral with a student, or he will
conduct a ground school class or he will fly. The type of student will also determine the type of preparation.
With a smart student, the flight instructor can go into details. With some others, very in deep details would
be useless and a basic concept should be taught instead.

Instructor should develop a lesson plan, or use one he already has. Instructor should develop objective and
standards, as well as levels of learning. By the end, a clear defined picture of the conduction of the lesson
should be developed.

Presentation methods
The flight instructors presents the material in the most effective possible way by:

1) Attention: starting with a lead off question, telling a joke, talking about a personal experience,
giving a scenario, watching a video. This will catch the student attention and boost interest.
2) Motivation: to offer student reason why the lesson is important to know and understand.
Highlighting the importance of the topic for safety; “tomorrow we’ll have a test about this”, will
motivate the student to stay focused.
3) Overview: introduction about what will be covered. Clear, concise presentation of objectives.
Should not be too long and boring.
4) Development: past to present (magnetic compass), simple to complex, known to unknown, most
frequently used to least used.

Nicolò Pomarolli Phoenix East Aviation 10/04/2023