Aviation Instructor's Handbook

Chapter 4: Effective Communication

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Communication takes place when one person transmits thoughts or feelings to another person or group; effectiveness is measured by similarity between that which is transmitted and received.

There are three basic elements of communication: Source, symbols, and receiver

The source is the speaker, sender, transmitter, or instructor. Effective instructors need to select and use meaningful language. It is the responsibility of the speaker or writer, as the source of communication, to realize that the effectiveness of the communication is dependent on the receiver's understanding of the symbols or words being used.

communicators consciously or unconsciously reveal information about themselves. Instructors should reveal positive attitudes about themselves, their students, and the ideas discussed. And they should use accurate, up-to-date, stimulating material.

Symbols are simple oral and and visual cues. The words in the vocabulary constitute a basic code, as are common gestures and facial expressions. Complex concepts are communicated only when symbols are combined in meaningful wholes as ideas, sentences, paragraphs, speeches, or chapters that mean something to the receiver.

An instructor should constantly monitor feedback from the learner in order to identify misunderstandings and tailor the presentation of information. Periodically asking the learner to explain his or her understanding of new information while it is being conveyed is one way to obtain such feedback.

The Receiver is the listener, reader, or student. In order to understand the process of communication, three characteristics of receivers need to be understood:

• Abilities: Does the student have any prior aviation experience? Or none whatsoever?
• Attitudes: Learners exhibit may indicate resistance, willingness, or passive neutrality. To gain and hold learner attention, attitudes should be molded into forms that promote reception of information. A varied communicative approach works best in reaching most learners since they have different attitudes.
• Experiences: Aviation learners usually have a significant amount of prior knowledge, many life experiences, and a number of decision-making skills.

The viewpoint and background of people may vary because of prior experiences or cultural differences.

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Barriers to effective communication

Barriers to effective communication can include:

• A lack of common experience, which can cause words to mean different things to different people (for example, a "stall").
• Overuse of abstractions, relying on words that are general rather than specific; abstract words stand for ideas that cannot be directly experiened and do not call forth mental images.
• Confusion between symbol and symbolized, when a word is confused for a different concept than the one expressed.
• External factors or Interference can be a result of factors outside of the instructor's control, such as physiological (hearing loss, illness, injury), environmental (noise in aircraft), and psychological (fear, mistrust, lack of committment to communicate).

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Developing Communication Skills

Communication skills result from experience and are enhanced by additional training. Communication skills need to be developed — they do not occur automatically.

Communication has occured when the desired result of communication is observed.

Communication begins with role playing during the instructor's training and continues into actual instruction.

Current FAA training emphasis has moved from a maneuvers-based training standard to what is called Scenario-Based Training (SBT). This method of instruction and learning allows learners to move from theory to practical application of skills during their training.

Instructional Communication

Instruction has taken place when the instructor explains a particular procedure and subsequently determines that the learner exhibits the desired response.

Principles of good communication include talking about deep knowledge and personal experience. The instructor should not be afraid to use examples of past experiences to illustrate particular points. An instructor's personal experiences make instruction more valuable than reading the same information in a textbook.

The instructor needs some way of determining results, and the method used should be related to the expected outcome. In the case of flight training, the instructor can judge the actual performance of a maneuver.

It is essential that students know the meaning of knowledge rather than facts and figures — for example, why an airplane stalls and how it stalls, rather than simply memorizing stall speeds.

Listening

Good instructors work to master listening ability and frequently self-evaluate in this area. Instructors can use a number of techniques to become better at listening.

The Instructor's Toolbox includes several listening techniques:

• Do not interrupt
• Do not judge
• Think before answering
• Be close enough to hear
• Watch nonverbal behavior
• Be aware of biases
• Look for underlying feelings
• Concentrate
• Avoid rehearsing answers while listening
• Do not insist on the last word

When the learner hears something being communicated, he or she may or may not comprehend what is being transmitted. On the other hand, when the learner truly hears the communication, he or she then interprets the communication based on their knowledge to that point, processes the information to a level of understanding, and attempts to make a correlation of that communicated information to the task at hand.

Instructors can help students listen as well. Rules of Listening for students include:

• Take notes
• Guard against daydreaming
• Listen for main ideas
• Be emotionally calm
• Listen to understand, not refute
• Be responsible for listening
• Be ready to listen

Nobody can remember everything. Note taking allows the learner to use an organized system to reconstruct what was said during the lesson.

Questioning

Good questioning also aids understanding. Instructors should ask both open-ended and focused questions. Open-ended questions are designed to encourage full, meaningful answers using the learner's own knowledge and perceptions. Closed-ended questions encourage a short or single-word answer.

Two ways of confirming that the learner and instructor understand things in the same way are the use of paraphrasing and perception checking. The instructor can use paraphrasing to show what the learner's statement meant to the instructor. In this way, the learner can then make any corrections or expansions on the statement in order to clarify.

Perception checking gets to the feelings of the learner, again by stating what perceptions the instructor has of the behavior that the learner can then clarify as necessary.

Instructional Enhancement

An instructor never stops learning. Knowledge of the subject material and skill at instructional communication are necessary to be an instructor. Increasing the depth of knowledge in either area makes the instructor more effective.

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Flight Instructor Test Questions

Practical Test Standards: Flight Instructor

Oral Exam Questions