I must admit I support Chuck Ellsworth's view on practice engine shut downs. I see no reason to shut down a perfectly good engine - simply because it may never get going again... and we all know the saying about the remaining engine runs just long enough to take you to the scene of the accident!
I really don't see / understand what educational benefit there is in watching the prop feather and unfeather in flight. We can demonstrate the action of the CSU and the Prop lever. We can Simulate Zero thrust, and we can perform touch or interrupted feather drills without setting the aircraft up for a REAL emergency.
(...and whether it's a PAN or a Mayday is quite academic in my book - it's STILL a real emergency!)
The one caveat I have, (yet I have seen no real evidence of this), is that a student taught touch drills only in practice, might (and I stress "might"), only perform touch drills in a real emergency. I still think the interrupted feather drill is a good compromise - even if it doesn't appear in the manuals.
Angel's One Fife; the advantage of discussing different teaching methods is that we will all take away something positive from it which, hopefully, will improve what and how we teach our students.
So with reference to your contemptuous dismissal of the practice of turning away from the source of fire in a ME aircraft, (and for the benefit of all of us mere mortals for whom the air generally passes in the opposite direction to travel), please would you kindly explain how you would propose to deflect flames from the left hand engine away from the fuselage if you adhered to a Left hand circuit pattern instead of a right hand circuit pattern?