FI Training
Dave - I think to sum it up, the FI course is designed to give you the basics of instructional technique, as well as the template of "patter" for each of the main PPL exercises. The rest comes from your own experience etc. I have been through both the military and civilian instructor training systems and my personal experience is that the mil system puts much more emphasis on standardisation of the way you teach an individual exercise, whereas the GA side seemed to me more "relaxed" (for want of a better word). There is also, I would suggest, much more (and more regular) monitoring of individual instructor standards - but then they can afford to do all that!
As we say with computers etc. - "rubbish in, rubbish out" and I think this is the big issue with instructing today. Take a guy fresh from his commercial course with 250 hours - he doesn't have a lot of experience, he doesn't know what he doesn't know and he can only teach what he does.
If the FI course were getting everyone to the same gold-standard of GA instructional knowledge, I think it would involve a hell of a lot more hours!
I'm not an FIE, so I can't comment on the requirements to pass an FI rating test. However, on my initial, I turned out what I would have said was a decidedly mediocre presentation of the exercise. To my surprise, the examiner seemed most pleased with it, which only leads me to wonder what the minimum acceptable standard was!
We really do seem to have drifted from the topic now, so apologies!