Am I a competency or evidenced trained former 737 captain? I need your help!
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Am I a competency or evidenced trained former 737 captain? I need your help!
Flight International 9-15 July 2013 has an article by David Learmout titled "Providing Evidence of Success" He reported on a conference run by IATA and the Royal Aeronautical Society that occurred in June this year, and which was on "improving training provision in the new era of competency-based training" It was designed to review how the introduction of competency-based training (CBT) is progressing. They found it progressing, but slowly.
The article goes on to say "Meanwhile, ICAO's manual on the application of evidence-based training became effective in May, providing global sanction to this new training philosophy. That contrasts with the existing system of running a periodic test routine based on prescribed manoeuvres, developed when airlines operated piston-engine aircraft"
Now an apology for cut and pasting these sentences from the FI pages but I needed to start somewhere.
When I learned to fly in a Tiger Moth, it included circuits and landings. Today, would we call this "competency based training" ? Or would it be "evidence-based training"? Because In my day, it was simply called flying training; something thousands of aero club pilots and military trained pilots did normally. Our instructors wrote progress reports in normal writing style.
Then one day my instructor sent me on my first solo flight.
Therefore, could that solo flight be the result of "evidence-based training" since there was evidence of a successful "outcome" Or was that "outcome-based training"?
Now please believe me when I say I am not trying to be precious here. But for the life of me I cannot see how normal old fashioned flying training has somehow been discarded in favour of what appears to be highly complicated and, need I say in my jaundiced view, unnecessary marking procedures where every movement by a student is assessed 1-5 or similar.
It seems to me with this so-called competency-based training, the amount of scribbling that an instructor is forced into while assessing a bog standard take off, means he spends half of the take off run in a simulator or the real thing, assessing so many parameters that he may miss a critical moment that should require his instant action.
Another extract from David Learmout article in FI says: "the still relatively new multi-crew pilot licence (MPL) adheres to the new philosophy. In fact, the MPL's development phase was the origin of the CBT's philosophy.
The article goes on to say, " It was the clean sheet on which necessary air transport skills were catalogued, with the observable performance levels required to demonstrate competency in each skill also identified and described making the satisfactory demonstration of those skills a matter of subjective judgement no longer. IATA describes the MPL course as "replacing with competency-based training the traditional application of box ticking, hours based, prescriptive syllabi".
Well, all I can say after trying to digest that lot, is HUH?
Maybe I am getting slower on the uptake with age. In fact I am. But the whole bloody thing has lost me as an instructor, leaving me reflecting on the good old days when flying training was enjoyable and simple.
However, before I go, can some kindly Ppruner please enlighten me in plain concise English the basic principles involved with competency-based and evidence-based training versus the flying training I enjoyed at my local flying school when I was 18 years old which was 60 years ago. And I went on to enjoy a successful career as a military and later airline pilot
The article goes on to say "Meanwhile, ICAO's manual on the application of evidence-based training became effective in May, providing global sanction to this new training philosophy. That contrasts with the existing system of running a periodic test routine based on prescribed manoeuvres, developed when airlines operated piston-engine aircraft"
Now an apology for cut and pasting these sentences from the FI pages but I needed to start somewhere.
When I learned to fly in a Tiger Moth, it included circuits and landings. Today, would we call this "competency based training" ? Or would it be "evidence-based training"? Because In my day, it was simply called flying training; something thousands of aero club pilots and military trained pilots did normally. Our instructors wrote progress reports in normal writing style.
Then one day my instructor sent me on my first solo flight.
Therefore, could that solo flight be the result of "evidence-based training" since there was evidence of a successful "outcome" Or was that "outcome-based training"?
Now please believe me when I say I am not trying to be precious here. But for the life of me I cannot see how normal old fashioned flying training has somehow been discarded in favour of what appears to be highly complicated and, need I say in my jaundiced view, unnecessary marking procedures where every movement by a student is assessed 1-5 or similar.
It seems to me with this so-called competency-based training, the amount of scribbling that an instructor is forced into while assessing a bog standard take off, means he spends half of the take off run in a simulator or the real thing, assessing so many parameters that he may miss a critical moment that should require his instant action.
Another extract from David Learmout article in FI says: "the still relatively new multi-crew pilot licence (MPL) adheres to the new philosophy. In fact, the MPL's development phase was the origin of the CBT's philosophy.
The article goes on to say, " It was the clean sheet on which necessary air transport skills were catalogued, with the observable performance levels required to demonstrate competency in each skill also identified and described making the satisfactory demonstration of those skills a matter of subjective judgement no longer. IATA describes the MPL course as "replacing with competency-based training the traditional application of box ticking, hours based, prescriptive syllabi".
Well, all I can say after trying to digest that lot, is HUH?
Maybe I am getting slower on the uptake with age. In fact I am. But the whole bloody thing has lost me as an instructor, leaving me reflecting on the good old days when flying training was enjoyable and simple.
However, before I go, can some kindly Ppruner please enlighten me in plain concise English the basic principles involved with competency-based and evidence-based training versus the flying training I enjoyed at my local flying school when I was 18 years old which was 60 years ago. And I went on to enjoy a successful career as a military and later airline pilot
Last edited by Tee Emm; 17th Jul 2013 at 11:33.
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Tee Emm you have my heartfelt sympathies.
it is all a load of newspeak
as an instructor you would only send a student out on the first solo if you thought the guy or lass competent to complete the solo. that judgement would be made by you on the basis of a gut feeling. what the numpties have tried to do is codify what went into achieving the gut feeling.
personally I prefer the environment where my instructor hopped out "for a piss" then stood just beyond the wing with a bigger and bigger grin as he watched the realisation set in that I was being sent solo. I six years in the army I never did a better salute than he did that day. Just after I took off the wind came up to 22 knots across the runway and persisted for half an hour. I never pranged it so his gut feeling was a good one.
ask the guy who wrote the article to explain it in plain english to a competent instructor who can't understand a word he wrote.
you'd be doing aviation a favour.
you are not the stupid one. he and the numpties like him are.
it is all a load of newspeak
as an instructor you would only send a student out on the first solo if you thought the guy or lass competent to complete the solo. that judgement would be made by you on the basis of a gut feeling. what the numpties have tried to do is codify what went into achieving the gut feeling.
personally I prefer the environment where my instructor hopped out "for a piss" then stood just beyond the wing with a bigger and bigger grin as he watched the realisation set in that I was being sent solo. I six years in the army I never did a better salute than he did that day. Just after I took off the wind came up to 22 knots across the runway and persisted for half an hour. I never pranged it so his gut feeling was a good one.
ask the guy who wrote the article to explain it in plain english to a competent instructor who can't understand a word he wrote.
you'd be doing aviation a favour.
you are not the stupid one. he and the numpties like him are.
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...the new era of competency-based training
This stuff is utter dreamed up by the scum that lurk in Human Remains. They are asked to work on projects like this by enlightened managements as a distraction to stop them interfering in things that really matter. The important questions are can you fly? Have you a got licence? Do you crash often?
dreamed up by the scum that lurk in Human Remains. They are asked to work on projects like this by enlightened managements as a distraction to stop them interfering in things that really matter. The important questions are can you fly? Have you a got licence? Do you crash often?
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Doesn't this simply mean that the purpose of training is for student to become competent, rather than to have received a specified number of hours covering certain specified activities?
In my experience most flying and simulation based training has been competency based, because the QFI / TRI / whatever wouldn't sign you off otherwise. Flight Ops inspectors / standards folks kept a keen eye on it.
But a lot of academic and theoretical training has tended to be evidence based. We gave bloggs half a day talking about CRM, or Security, or whatever, and the authorities do not seem to give a damn what was covered as long as a box is ticked that some training was done.
e.g. I spent several years delivering TCAS theoretical training, and I happen to think it was a damn good course (the stuff that would later come out of the Uberlingen collision we had already identified from FAA incident reports). But nobody from the regulators ever asked what we were teaching, or observed it.
In my experience most flying and simulation based training has been competency based, because the QFI / TRI / whatever wouldn't sign you off otherwise. Flight Ops inspectors / standards folks kept a keen eye on it.
But a lot of academic and theoretical training has tended to be evidence based. We gave bloggs half a day talking about CRM, or Security, or whatever, and the authorities do not seem to give a damn what was covered as long as a box is ticked that some training was done.
e.g. I spent several years delivering TCAS theoretical training, and I happen to think it was a damn good course (the stuff that would later come out of the Uberlingen collision we had already identified from FAA incident reports). But nobody from the regulators ever asked what we were teaching, or observed it.
