There have been many attempts at producing standardized training curricula. Standardization can mean many things but generally refers to associating specific activities with each flight in a well-ordered sequence of flights. The most rigid forms of this are often seen in military training, and reflect the approach of getting students to meet a standard or ‘wash out’. The success rate of such programs often depends on good student selection processes. If we assume that we do not select our target audience and the end product is a recreational pilot, this is probably not the most effective approach to successfully complete flight training. We need to find at a better way.
I suggest that we should start to think in terms of skills and outcomes, rather than rigid lessons. Arguably, after the first few lessons this is the mode in which most experienced instructors operate anyway. Instructors identify that a student needs a specific skill to move to the next stage and then proceed to help them develop this skill.
Most skills follow a progression from introduction, to practice, to mastery at some standard. In a dynamic environment such as flying, these steps often cannot be accomplished in one flight. Instructors are required to assess the conditions and tailor their instruction to what is offered by nature and to what their students need to work on. I have seen instructors trying to teach the next thing on the ‘curriculum’ under conditions where a student cannot reasonably expect to succeed. Both parties will be frustrated under such circumstances. This does not mean, however, that there isn’t any structure to flight training. There are definite skills and specific targets at any given level. However there may be more than one path that can be followed to the next stage. The conditions and the student’s requirements at any given moment will dictate the path.
For arguments sake I suggest that we can break down initial flight training into basic, intermediate, and advanced stages. Each of these levels has specific, skill-based goals, that instructors can recognize and use to both promote and monitor student progress. The approach on any given flight is to do whatever is necessary to attain these skills to move on to the next level. There are very few rigid lesson plans. These are supplanted by checklists, which are skill-oriented.