SBT –
I’ve begun to notice this with the flight students as well. A few years ago I was running some students through a regime in the (simulator) lab and running through the data there was a confound that was stronger than any of the effects we were measuring. What we found was that in this particular scenario, flight school was the biggest predictor of behavior; students who had received their primary training at a small flight school with flexible training plans were (surprise) flexible in their problem solving, while students who had trained at a formal, structured program navigated the scenario using the school’s pre-determined criteria. The students from small schools came up with a wide variety of solutions while the students from one of the local schools all had the same solution.
This project was looking at the influence of one of Hofstede’s cultural dimensions; I attribute what was observed to the dimension he labeled “uncertainty avoidance.” (Unfortunately this wasn’t the one I was looking at.) Cultures strong in uncertainty avoidance look to authority to guide their behavior while cultures low in uncertainty trust the individuals to make decisions at the local level. It got me wondering whether the formal structure of some flight schools (instituted to reduce risk of their operations) is actually costing us in the form of decision-making skills.
Thoughts?