8.5 Remedial Instruction

If, despite the instructor's best efforts, the student's ability to fly the monitor phase is unacceptable, further analysis by the instructor is required. It may well be that the instructor has failed to transfer the information effectively. Re-demonstrating, further subdivision, or using a different approach may be necessary before the instructor may reasonably assume that the fault is the student's and not their own.

The most important thing to establish at this point is not just WHAT the student is doing wrong, but WHY he/she is doing it. This is achieved by root cause analysis of the situation: find the primary source of the error, rather than the last step in the chain of events that led to the error. Fundamental questions should be considered and asked such as:

Where is the student looking?
What instruments is he/she scanning during a particular sequence?
How is the student prioritising what to do?

Once the instructor has established WHY they are failing to achieve the standard, the instructor can develop a strategy for HOW to fix it. As their instructor, offer them strategies to prioritise their actions, and give them mechanisms to cope with the task. Subdivide the task if necessary, so the instructor can concentrate on the part the student is having difficulty with.

Symptoms versus root cause in airborne instruction

A student who consistently undershoots the threshold on visual approaches may be presenting a handling symptom; the root cause may be a scan pattern that does not include the touchdown aim point during the final-approach segment, or a misjudgement of the descent profile because the visual cue the student is using is wrong. Treating only the handling symptom (more flare practice, more direction during the round-out) without diagnosing the upstream scan or judgement issue produces a student who can land successfully under instruction but not unaided. The fundamental questions in the bullet list above (where is the student looking, what is being scanned, how is the student prioritising) are the diagnostic toolkit 8.5 Remedial Instruction provides for getting upstream of the symptom.

The root-cause analysis discipline

The root-cause analysis discipline named here is the same discipline ICAO Doc 9995 7.4.5 names for the EBT evaluation phase: identify the root cause of any deficiency rather than the symptoms. A competency gap that is treated only at symptom level will recur. 8.5 Remedial Instruction applies the discipline to airborne instruction; ICAO 9995 applies it to EBT evaluation; in both cases the operational rule is the same. The technique, in airborne context:

WHAT. Observe the symptom: the manoeuvre is not flown to standard. This is the Monitor-phase output of the 8.4 Fundamentals of Airborne Instruction.
WHY. Investigate upstream: what is the student looking at, what scan are they running, how are they prioritising? The investigation can be conducted partly through observation and partly through eliciting (the same eliciting discipline 8.3 The Student applies to WSK).
HOW. Develop the corrective strategy: prioritisation aid, coping mechanism, further subdivision of the task. The HOW step is the airborne counterpart of the 7.3 General Debrief Techniques technique applied during the sortie.

The remediation material is explicit that subdivision recurs in this remediation loop. Subdivision was first introduced in the 8.4 Fundamentals of Airborne Instruction as a tool for the initial demonstration; it returns here as a tool for narrowing focus on the part of the task the student is failing on. The same operation serves a different purpose at each appearance: in the Demonstrate phase it scopes the demonstration to the student's current capability; in the remediation loop it isolates the failing component so the corrective work has somewhere targeted to land.

Teach, not test

Remember the instructor's job is to teach the student, not test. By the end of the session, the instructor should have tried everything possible to ensure the aims of the lesson were achieved.

Training is not checking

The teach-not-test rule is the load-bearing distinction between the training and the checking modes of an instructor's role. The same flight conducted as training and as a check produces different airborne behaviour from the instructor: under training, the instructor remediates and remediates and remediates until the aim of the lesson is achieved (or until the available time is exhausted and the gap is recorded for the next session). Under checking, the instructor observes and grades. An instructor who slips into checking mode during a training sortie has stopped being a teacher; the student loses the remediation cycles the lesson depends on, and the lesson outcome is graded against an unfair standard. The full operational treatment of this distinction is in 1.4 Methods of Training and Checking.

By the end of the session, the instructor should be able to answer the question: "Have I tried everything possible to ensure the aims of the lesson were achieved?" If yes, the session has been conducted correctly, regardless of whether the aims were achieved. If the aims were not achieved despite a correct session, the gap is real and the instructor records it for the next session, the next instructor, and (if the gap is persistent) for a remedial training plan that runs outside the normal syllabus. If no, there are remediation moves the instructor failed to make, and the instructor's preparation, technique, or judgement is the variable to address before the next session.

How remediation connects to the post-flight debrief

The remediation loop above is one of two diagnostic outputs from the airborne sequence; the other is the post-flight debrief. The two are not redundant:

Remediation in the airborne sequence addresses errors the instructor can fix within the time and safety constraints of the sortie. Subdivision, re-demonstration, alternative approach, in-flight micro-debrief: all of these run inside the cockpit or simulator while the lesson time is still active.
Post-flight debrief addresses the residual: what could not be fixed in the air, what the student will benefit from reflecting on, what the file needs to record for the next instructor. The full debrief discipline is in 7.1 Introduction.

A student who has been remediated effectively in the air still benefits from the debrief; a student who could not be remediated in the air depends on the debrief to surface the WHY and to set up the next session's remediation plan. The two diagnostics are sequential: airborne remediation runs first, post-flight debrief runs after.

Connections

8.4 Fundamentals of Airborne Instruction. The DDM model whose Monitor phase produces the diagnostic input this remediation loop consumes.
8.6 Summary. Consolidates the WSK / WTT / HTT chain with the DDM toolkit and this remediation loop.
1.4 Methods of Training and Checking. The full operational treatment of the training-versus-checking distinction this section invokes.
7.1 Introduction. The post-flight debrief that consumes the residual the airborne remediation could not address.
7.3 General Debrief Techniques. The programme levels of proficiency the lesson plan binds the remediation target to.
A2.5 Unit 4 Conduct Training. The competency framework that codifies the remediation discipline as instructor performance criteria.
ICAO-9995. The standards-body source of the root-cause-rather-than-symptom rule the remediation discipline mirrors.

8.5 Remedial Instruction

#The root-cause analysis discipline

#Teach, not test

#How remediation connects to the post-flight debrief

#Connections

The root-cause analysis discipline

Teach, not test

How remediation connects to the post-flight debrief

Connections