With respect to the Airbus fleet, I cannot put the blame solely on the "airbus" techniques, literature and inconsistencies either, although I think that is the underlying cause in most cases
Very true. Unfortunately (or not?) the company is heading towards the Manufacturer's guidance, in this case Airbus's, in order to avoid litigation issues following incidents etc. You mentioned the new FCTM - it is indeed a decent document, although I still miss some of the really good stuff which we lost when the old FCTM was removed. Some of the explanations in the latter were simple yet detailed enough to satisfy the cravings of anyone requiring "exact wording".
Having said that, trainers are only allowed to instruct what the books say. If there is scope of going beyond that (especially regarding technique) then it should be mentioned that " a good way of doing this is by........although this is my technique and not strict EK procedure, which is unavailable". Hence a trainee should be allowed to use his own technique as long as it's safe and within the confines of SOPs. The biggest nightmare is with cadets because they have no previous experience to speak of and have only the instructor's technique to cling to.
As to the main subject of the thread, I'm glad to see that most people seem to agree with what I initially said. I'm not scaremongering here but I do believe in good prep before a sim session. The Transition course has been pared down significantly and many items done in the sim are only flown once or twice, with no time to do repeats. Hence the "checking not training" perception that there might be in the ranks. Of course it would be great to have sufficient time to explain things and learn by repetition etc. but the program does not allow this and trainers have no say in the matter - they just get on with it. Hence good preparation beforehand by the trainees will make life easier for everybody and good results follow. As has been mentioned by others in this thread, barring the cadet course, all pilots under training are supposed to be seasoned flyers, not ab-initios.