TopCat wrote:Morten wrote:Unless this is a typo for 'pattern'
It isn't.
As a long-time STEM subject tutor, specialising in getting into students' heads and figuring out why they don't understand, and then finding a way of fixing their often very specific problems, all my instincts scream with horror that there's such a thing.
But maybe there's only one way of teaching flying. Seems a little unlikely to me, but heyho. I'd be interested to hear instructors' experiences with that book.
Only just spotted this thread. But felt it worth adding my 2p's worth.
It's a surprisingly useful book. Perhaps the one I found the most help in learning to teach the flight exercises. It's really hard to demonstrate a manoeuvre and, in synch, describe what you are doing, what is happening and what the student needs to be looking for. That's what this book helps with.
Of course you go off piste fairly quickly once a student and their idiosyncrasies are known to you. But knowing what to say and when is key to getting stuff into a student's brain.
Frank Tredrey in Pilots Summer - which is about learning to be an RAF instructor in the 1930's - tells how they had to get the patter word perfect and in perfect synch. The secret is to learn to carry out the manoeuvre at a rate which fits in with how fast you describe it, not the other way round.
I should add that the tutorial stuff and real learning happen on the ground in the brief and debrief (that's the part that is analogous to teaching a STEM subject). The in flight exercises are prove that it does do what you said it would, and to get the student's muscle memory off on the right track - maybe more like doing a demonstration in a physics lab I suppose.
There's more to this instructing malarkey than you might think.