Document created: 21 April 03
Air University Review, March-April 1976

Learning--Despite the Instructor

Despite our instructor pilots, instructor navigators, classroom instructors, and hundreds of other military instructors, our Air Force personnel are still able to learn. Despite the thousands of mistakes we as instructors make, our students are still able to gain understanding. Realizing this phenomenon, I have searched for the answer to why our students are still able to learn. The search has led me to believe we are wasting millions of dollars everyday on our Air Force training programs through ineffective teaching techniques. But, then, what can we expect from instructors who are not teachers but in many instances simply the most experienced people in their field of study? My solution to this teaching ineffectiveness is simple to state: we must change our training programs to learning programs; we must change the behavior-modification approach in the training programs to an approach that emphasizes the shaping of student understanding; and we must teach our instructors how to let the students learn. This solution is more difficult to achieve than to state. Before discussing how to effect this transformation process, let me establish the difference between learning and training. Then I will analyze a learning mode that will help Air Force instructors progress from a behavior-modification training program to a program of learning through a shaping of understanding.

Establishing the difference between training and learning is not an exercise in semantics but rather a distinction in perception. Allow me to define the two concepts as I view them. Training is a concern for what a student does. (What his behavior is; how he does a particular thing.) On the other hand, learning is a concern for what the student understands. (That is, how he perceives the subject matter within his environment.)

Both training and learning have a place in our Air Force programs. Training is useful if we need to train a person in a technical skill where he is required to respond to a stimulus like a machine or like an animal. But when we want a person to gain an understanding that he can use as a basis for judgment and responsible action, then we must allow him to learn. The basis for training can be found in the theories of physiologists and psychologists whose research is mainly based on animal study. For example, Ivan Pavlov and his salivating dogs show the classical application of concern for what a person does. In Pavlovian conditioning, an unconditioned stimulus, such as food, produces an unconditioned response such as salivation. But if you pair a conditioned stimulus, such as a bell, several times with the unconditioned stimulus, the food, the result will be a conditioned response.

As an instructor pilot, I applied this stimulus-response training methodology numerous times in the Air Force KC-135 night simulators. In the simulators, I taught emergency procedures to pilots by requiring them to respond to stimuli, such as a red fire-warning light. However, this stimulus-response type of training was quickly forgotten by the students and wasted unless I continually (at a large cost) trained and retrained the students to respond to the stimuli. By retraining, I reinforced the proper response.

For behaviorists, such as B. F. Skinner, this retraining or reinforcement is a basic factor in the training process. Such behaviorists believe that a response can be reinforced either by presenting a positive reinforcer or by removing a negative reinforcer.

How effective is this stimulus-response-reinforcement type of training? The answer to this question can be discovered from the formal empirical study by the U.S. Army, Air Force, and Navy conducted in 1959-1960 on an Air Force B-47 crew. (See Figure 1.) The study showed that after a 30-day period a nonexperienced pilot would forget 25 to 30 percent of his air-crew training. This study also showed that after a 90-day period a nonexperienced pilot would forget 65 to 70 percent of his training. In Air Force pilot and combat crew training schools we spend thousands of dollars to train a pilot. For this investment, the study leads me to believe, we can expect this pilot, before he gets settled at his first assignment, to have forgotten 65 to 70 percent of what he was trained to do. Is this training cost effective? In my opinion, it would be more cost effective if the student could gain an understanding that would allow him never to forget. This depth of understanding is what I call learning!

The basis for what I perceive as learning can be found in the theories of well-known psychologists whose research is mainly based on human study. Max Wertheimer believed that learning involved a reorganization of the perceptual process. Wolfgang Kohler believed in insightful learning in which a person has the appearance of a complete solution with reference to the total environment. Kurt Lewin believed in the life space of field theory, where the totality of facts determines a person's behavior. These psychologists believed, as I do, in learning as an internalization of the environment. This occurs when a person has an idea or gains some insight. He relates to previous experiences and builds onto this idea or insight with other insights and develops generalizations. He validates these generalizations internally, in his own mind, and develops understanding. This understanding is a learning process that will always remain with him. It will act as a basis for future learning experiences and judgments and give guidance to future actions. For instance, as an instructor pilot, I cannot train my student to respond to every emergency situation with which he might be confronted in his aircraft. However, I can help him gain an understanding of his total environment if he internally wants to accept and learn about it. From this knowledge of the general environment, he can draw specific facts to solve specific problems that I, as an instructor, might never conceive of as occurring. The student thus learns a basis for his own judgment. Therefore, I have been led to believe that people do not learn from external factors unless they internally accept the subject matter. Instructors are external factors, and unless the student actively seeks information from them, accepts their information, and then internalizes the external inputs or stimuli, he will not learn from the instructor. The student may be trained to respond to the instructor and his stimulus, but he will not learn unless he internalizes the stimulus-response connection. Thus, despite the instructor, the student will learn.

Should we do away with instructors, then? No! The instructor plays a most important role in the student's learning process. But the instructor should realize specifically what that role entails. He should realize that his role is to provide a learning environment for the student, determine what motivates that student to learn, and then provide that student motivation to internalize the environment.

This instructor role is the basis for a nondirective instructional philosophy. But how do we fulfill this nondirective role in the Air Force when we don't have time in our fast pace and highly technical aerospace environment? Not true! There is a nondirective instructional method available to us that works. I have proved its success in Strategic Air Command's combat crew training program at Castle AFB, California. I have proved its success in teaching high school algebra and geometry. I have realized success with this philosophy in the Air University's Squadron Officer School. Let me share this philosophy with you, for I believe sincerely that this philosophy, if consistent with the learning experiences presented to the learner, will be effective, will yield 100 percent learning, and will save valuable men, money, and material resources for the Air Force. Let's analyze this nondirective learning mode in an easy step-by-step checklist format that we might find useful if we adapt this learning mode to our lesson plans.

There are three basic assumptions we must discuss and agree to in principle before we can develop the mechanics of this nondirective learning mode. First, we must agree that we do not really know how people learn. Can you say specifically that you know how people learn? Yes, we have clues to motivation, ability to memorize, skill in retention of "learned" information; but in fact we do not know how each individual learns. Next, we may not know how people learn, but we know that individuals do learn in differing ways. Therefore, we cannot expect each student to learn through the application of just one method of instruction. Some people are visual learners and others are oral learners. We could not present a lecture to a group of visual learners and expect learning to occur with each student. A single instructional mode may be more appropriate to some students in the class and less appropriate to others. The learned results will differ in accordance with the rightness of the instructional method used. Finally, it is the instructor's responsibility to select the varied instructional procedures best suited to support the learning of each individual student. To provide for this third basic premise, we must agree that each instructor must develop various and numerous lesson modes to meet the various needs of the students. I realize this requires the instructor to do a great deal of planning and organizing of his lessons. But if learning is to take place, he must consider different variations.

The variations that might be considered may include any or all of the following seven modes. First, some students may need individual textbook study in order to gain a functional knowledge of the field of study. Some people can just read a book and absorb everything required to understand. (I wish I could learn that way.)

Second, some students may learn best from schematic drawings, charts, and appropriate statistical information. They can gain an understanding by seeing total structure in brief, nontextual form.

Third, some students may not be good readers or visual-type learners but can gain understanding through "hands on" experiences. These students learn best by fondling the switches or physically handling the subject matter. This mode is vitally needed for students who do not function well with abstract textbook approaches or schematic presentations.

Fourth, the failure or error experience technique is needed to allow students who learn best in this manner to discover and learn through experimentation and learning by mistakes. This is a variation of the "hands on" technique and is carefully designed to provide for mistakes. This technique allows students to find out what will happen through rather dramatic demonstration of error. For example, if a student does not realize that handling dynamite roughly is dangerous, the most dramatic way for him to learn is to let him handle the dynamite roughly. When it explodes, he will learn to handle dynamite more carefully. This is an absurd example, but it describes how we might provide a meaningful experience for a student so that through error he will gain understanding of the subject matter.

Fifth, some students need a study of "small segments" of the total field of learning. This is a building-block approach in which we allow them to construct each of these small-segment learnings into a large learning field. This mode provides students with understanding as each part is learned. Also, it allows them to treat or study small fields as their personal mode of learning because the larger field of study may be threatening to them.

Sixth, oral study in small groups and/or pairs of learners may be appropriate to other students. For these students, the practice of discussing the field of study may be the only way for them to commit learning to real understanding. For these students, textual approaches almost insure failure, even though they may have the potential to learn. I have seen numerous Air Force officers walk out of a lecture totally confused about a subject; but after a discussion in a small study group they were able to gain total understanding of the subject.

Finally, any combination of the foregoing learning modes may be needed by the students. Many function well when the learning modes are varied; in fact, some students do not realize that they learn better through other than a single instructional process. However, it is essential that the instructor realize it and take it into consideration when preparing his lesson plan.

To effectively use a nondirective method of instruction, the instructor must also consider five other items.

•He must know his students. He must know as much as possible about each student's interests, verbal skills, manual abilities, social (human relationships) attributes, and, most important, how he learns best, If the instructor has one student who learns best by small-group discussion, he must be aware of that situation.

•Within the scope of the facilities available to the instructor, time limits allowed for preparation, and lead time in getting to know the students, the instructor needs to plan for those varied learning styles represented by the students.

•The instructor must have a thorough knowledge of the teaching aids available. Frequently, the failure of students to learn can be traced back to lack of understanding by the instructor of the learning resources available to support instruction. For example, I had a student pilot who was not a visual learner. He could not understand how the KC-135 fuel panel operated by reading the book. I explained it several times to no avail. I finally observed that he seemed to be a "hands-on," experience type of learner. I got a mock-up fuel panel from the back of an old storage room, and I sent the mock-up home with him that night. I never had to say anything to him again about the fuel panel. Somehow, that night, he had fondled the fuel switches, had some "hands-on" experiences, and gained understanding of the fuel panel operation. Had I not known that mock-up was available for use, he still might not understand how to operate the fuel panel.

•The instructor needs to give careful consideration to maximizing the "participation" of each student. The instructor should not, through excess appreciation of his own skill, assume that, by doing all of the talking or demonstrating, he can reduce the failure rate and obtain the desired progress by students. Interpretation and understanding of learning more often than not are dependent upon students' being allowed to ask the kinds of questions that will lead to more precise understanding or sometimes to verbalize information as a means for clarifying understanding. I have seen so many instructors, honestly trying to help their students perform better, talk and talk to no avail. I, too, have been guilty of talking and demonstrating to some students on how to do a particular maneuver in the airplane, and they finally say, "How about just letting me do it, make a mistake, and learn from it." To learn, the student must participate in the environment.

•When presenting information to be learned, regardless of the mode, the instructor must make sure that each student recognize challenge in learning at each presentation. If a student feels that the learning is too simple to require serious attention, he is likely not to learn anything. The instructor must be aware of these situations and consider each as he applies the nondirective methodology in the classroom.

When applying the mechanics of the nondirective learning approach to the procedures for instruction, the instructor must complete at least five functions. First, he must establish the learning environment as completely as possible. In the learning environment, the instructor will want texts, reference books, schematic drawings, disassembled equipment, work tables, functions charts, and any other aids that will best meet the individual learning needs of the students.

Second, the instructor must create problems, which the students, in pairs, small groups, or single, must solve with the available resources carefully placed in the learning environment. These problems may be as simple as a question such as, "What is the relationship between ____and ___?" or as difficult as, "How does _____ system function?"

Third, with the environment established and the problem presented to the students, the instructor should allow students to familiarize themselves with the equipment and other features of the learning environment. Often a few minutes of undirected time for free exploration at this stage may save hours of later instruction time. I have heard the never-ending instructor complaint that they don't have time available to teach everything they need to teach. So, how can they just give up this free time for exploration? In one instructional period I spent hours, with little success, trying to explain to a young pilot how an aircraft electrical system operated. Exasperated, I finally took a coffee break. When I returned, the student had somehow gained a complete understanding of the electrical system. He had not understood the direction in which one switch moved, and it gave him a complete mental block. During the coffee break, he had played with the switches on a mock-up and gained an insight I could not or did not provide him. He just needed time to internalize the electrical system.

Fourth, after questions have been asked or problems placed in the learning environment, the instructor must circulate there and ask more questions to prompt careful thought by the students as they study and explore. The instructor should use questions that force participation, such as "Why do you think that this would work in such and such a way?" This type of question is much better than "Name this part!" or "What is the name of this part?" This question period of study may be as long as necessary to ensure that each student has some definite solutions or answers to questions.

Finally, at that time when students or a single student feels he understands a basic learning, the instructor must ask him to demonstrate his understanding and to explain it. This ability to explain is necessary if full understanding is to exist. As the student explains the instructor must ask questions deliberately designed to confuse him. This will test the student's correct understanding or send him back to study some more. This learning process is not a difficult one to apply, and it has its rewards for all concerned.

The reward of such nondirective instruction is great understanding. For those students with superior abilities, it allows time for acquiring a greater understanding than the instructor may have planned in the same given time frame. It allows the student to learn by having an internal experience and gaining an understanding he will never forget. By contrast, in our usual training programs we constantly reinforce and reteach the same material to the same students, day after day, only to have them forget 65 to 70 percent in 90 days. There must be a better way!

This article describes a better way. As instructors, we must understand the difference between training and learning, we must know how our students learn best, and we must provide the students with a learning environment that will best allow them to internalize the learning subject matter. For despite all of the instructor's external attempts to teach what he has already internalized, the student will internalize only what he is motivated to internalize. Only then will the student gain understanding and 100 percent learning. Only then will our Air Force programs be cost effective. In my opinion, we must consider the phenomenon that despite the instructor the student will learn.

Squadron Officer School, AU

Captain Charles E. Austin (M. A., Chapman College) is a Section Commander, Squadron Officer School. He has flown the C-7A aircraft in Southeast Asia and the KC-135 in Strategic Air Command. As a KC-135 CCTS Flight Line Instructor at Castle AFB, California, he developed and conducted Learning Theory Seminars for all new squadron instructors and SAC’s Central Flight Instructor Course. He has been selected twice to appear in the volume of Outstanding Young Men of America Awards for distinguished civic and professional achievements.

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