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Instructing for Success

While it is certainly true that we learn from our failures, often we only learn about failing. For example, when we let a student on first attempts at the aerotow to get out of position and swing wildly behind the towplane, we are instructing for failure not success. The student obviously lacks some skill in controlling the aerotow, yet the instructor allows the situation to get out of hand. With physical skills in particular, when the instructor takes over, re-positions the glider and hands back the controls to the student to try again, this is not being too easy on the student. Rather it is developing correct patterns for controlling the aircraft that will not be confused with the incorrect patterns learned in the ‘out of control’ case. Once the student learns the normal behaviour, they can then be tested with the ‘out of position’ case to confirm what has been learned.

A second example of instructing for failure is the approach in teaching glideslope control on approach.  Many instructors feel that if a student touches down well beyond or well short of the desired point that they will be learning a valuable lesson. This would be true if they could relate it directly back to their lack of glidepath control. Unfortunately that is in the past. What we don’t know as the instructor is if the student understands how to use the spoilers properly to maintain the glidepath with respect to an aiming point. What the student understands is that we don’t like the result. Unless we can confirm their understanding of the fundamentals however, we may end up with better behaviour but not necessarily true learning. With complex activities such as the landing, there certainly is a good case for motorized gliders or effective simulators. These can be used to instruct for success rather than recognizing failure.

Instructing for failure is characterized by giving the final test first and then trying to find out what the student needs to learn. Instructing for success relies on keeping the student on a normal course and trying to understand what leads them astray. When teaching tasks that require a high degree of coordination of visual and physical skills, it is much more effective to use the teaching for success approach.

This does not mean that the student should not fail, just that we should as much as possible seek out the conditions for success first and then test the knowledge or skills gained at a later date. For failure to be an effective teaching mode, there must be time available to make corrections or ascertain the nature of the failure at the time. When we are looking at errors in judgement in the green or yellow situations there is often time to recognize failure and perform corrective action. In the red situations when time is short, failing is likely to cause setbacks rather than progress.