You cannot be taught situational awareness you can put more information in the main memory banks.
I disagree. You can teach anyone, anything what you cant teach is for them to excel. You can teach a pilot how to improve his SA awareness enormously, and usually because they have never been shown before.
I also knew another pilot who was detailed to the extreme. He planned every tiny detail and was an excellent pilot till one day his destination went down as did his alternatives and he no longer had his plans.
Actually nearly everything we do is based on past experience. It is experience that helps us to think outside the box. This pilot was in no different a situation but had clearly never been challenged as to what he would do when his alternate went down as well. If he were an instrument pilot then the training let him down badly, if he was not, then the training still left a great deal to be desired.
Actually I think for most pilots, including myself, the problems really start when you encounter a new problem followed by another event or event(s) that come quickly or the first problem does not respond in the way we think it should. For example I had an over temp on an engine, found myself in two minds whether or not to shut it down because I had never seen the problem before and the POH conflicted with my natural reaction, and then I found I couldnt adequately trim out the asymetry, so I ended up working two unexpected issues whilst managing to lose some SA.