People as Informal, Extended Resources Learning
(PIER Learning)

by Dianne Hill

Significant demands placed on aviation systems resulting from advanced technology and global issues as well as aviation clients challenge aviation training for results. Aviation training currently approaches learning from a pedagogical model that is not consistent with the needs of today’s sophisticated aviation systems. An intervention in the learning system could create the culture change necessary to imbed learning as a way of being as opposed to emphasis on the individual pilot (Hackman, 1993, p. 49) or disconnected learning (Helmreich, 1993, pp. 481-483). By imbedding in the organizational or system culture a process of informal and extended learning, the activity is continuously facilitated by the learners themselves. This paper describes the application of four existing learning designs for such an intervention.

Definition of terms

Synergogy is an alternative mode of education that can be examined in the light of the benefits and limitations of two traditional approaches, pedagogy and andragogy.

Pedagogy is the most standard classroom model: an instructor, who is an expert in the subject under study lectures, gives assignments, tests student achievement, and so forth. In brief, the teacher teaches and the learners passively absorb whatever they can. A key advantage of pedagogy is that it permits codified knowledge to be presented in an orderly manner. Its chief disadvantage, however, is that the students are often passive and unmotivated.

Andragogy (meaning "adults teaching other adults") posits a different role for the instructor. The teacher serves as a facilitator or catalyst for the learners' activities. An advantage of andragogy is that learners' motivation is enhanced through greater responsibility for and involvement in learning. But andragogic methods are often situation dependent and cannot be applied to codify or standardize information for mass use.

Synergogy builds on the best features of pedagogy and andragogy while avoiding the limitations associated with each. It does so by enabling learners to acquire codified knowledge under conditions that arouse their involvement and commitment.

Synergogy is derived from two Greek words: synergos ("working together") and agogus ("leader of"), which has come to mean "teacher." Synergogy thus refers to "working together for shared teaching." Synergogy is a systematic approach to learning in which the members of small teams learn from one another through structured interactions, thus the idea of synergy in learning. Challenge and stimulation are created through social situations under which real as well as felt needs for learning can be satisfied. The instructor or learning administrator provides educational materials from which knowledge or insights can be acquired and creates designs "instructions for team action" that stimulate learning (Mouton and Blake, 1984).

United Airlines and Scientific Methods, Inc. collaborated on the original Grid-theory (Blake and Mouton, 1964) based Cockpit Resource Management training and application programs incorporating the behavioral elements of inquiry, advocacy, conflict, critique, and decision making, (Blake, Mouton and C/L/R Management at United Airlines, 1982, pp. 27-31) using Synergogic learning designs. Prior to the seminar, each crewmember read information regarding behavior. Content knowledge for the Grid theory of behavior was generally a new area of learning for crewmembers. The seminar prework required that the learner evaluate understanding by responding to multiple choice or true-false questions over the reading. At the seminar, crewmembers were divided into learning teams. Crewmembers were then asked to reach agreement on one answer for each of the prework questions. This particular learning design is referred to as the "Team Effectiveness Design" or TED (Mouton and Blake, 1987, pp. 17-18). Individual knowledge is tested at the team level through discussion using the desired elements of behavior: inquiry, advocacy, conflict, critique, and decision making. However, any theory model or content can be used.

In order to develop team skills, individual crewmembers learn to rely on one another, rather than a teacher, for content knowledge. The learning facilitator or resource person may provide brief theory, content, or process interventions as the teams solve their challenges. Crew or team members interact with activities that serve as the stimulus for learning by providing general guidelines for how the work is to be accomplished and by what deadline.

The stimulus learning materials are often intentionally general so the teams are forced to define "how" their work will be done. Learning instruments point the way through activities that are later scored both individually and as a team. Generally the team has better results than most of the individuals on the team. Teams then evaluate how they worked together and develop a plan to increase their effectiveness (1987, p. 17).

A distinguishing feature of the design is that it calls for mutual responsibility among a team of learners. The learning instruments present the subject matter to be learned. . . Yet, in contrast to discovery learning or open classroom, professional responsibility for the subject matter is retained in the construction of the instruments. The TED is useful for presenting subject matter that requires students to learn facts and data and to deduce principles or consequences. The learner's interest in the subject matter is supported by his or her inherent curiosity about how and why others think as they do (1987, pp. 17-18).

Participants in a Team Member Teaching Design (TMTD) learn an assigned part of the subject matter and teach it to the other team members. This design requires that the material be divisible into distinct sections or parts that stand alone for study. The full picture comes into view when the last part has been presented. The team members then complete a test over the material on both an individual basis and a team basis to reach consensus on the subject matter presented. In a follow-up critique session, team members compare their individual and team answers with an expert rationale. Team members also assess the level of learning exhibited by fellow team members and how effectively the material was communicated to the rest of the team members. Areas of improvement are discussed for each team member.

This design stimulates learners to study and become experts on an individually assigned portion. This type of mastery will enable crewmembers to help their team. Similarly, the team members being taught are highly motivated to help the presenter communicate what he or she studied as prework. Like the TED, TMTD is most useful for aiding the learners to acquire information facts, and data. . . . In addition, this design fosters participant listening skills and abilities to pose constructive questions in response to others' presentation of information. The TMTD demands of the team members different study skills than the TED: members preparing for team-member teaching are more likely to study in depth and need to synthesize the information so as to present it logically and coherently. Thus members learning is facilitated by their having to organize an informative presentation. The TMTD and TED can be used in combination to add variety to the learning situation (1987, pp. 18-19).

The Team-Member-Teaching-Design (TMTD) was used for a recent Human Factors seminar. Flight crewmembers participated in a two-day seminar at the NBAA (National Business Aircraft Association) 49^th Annual Convention in November 1996. Using the TMTD design, material to be learned was divided into parts, one for each team member on a team. Each team member learned a distinct part of the material and presented that piece to the other members. When completed, the individual learning pieces resulted in a complete learning piece, as if a puzzle had been assembled (Aronson, 1978). Team members answered questions about the subject matter. After individual responses, they reached agreement on one answer for each question. Scoring of the activity revealed individual knowledge and team knowledge as well as indicating team effectiveness on the task. Content knowledge derived from the TMTD design was similar to results from the TED learning design, as was the team effectiveness scoring.

The Clarifying Attitudes Design was also used in the Cockpit Resource Management training (or C/L/R by United Airlines). The particular application revealed individual assumptions toward causes of stress. Some stressors were identified as having high impact, while disagreement existed on other causes of stress (Blake et al, 1982; Blake et al, 1990).

People’s attitudes profoundly influence their effectiveness as well as personal satisfaction, and attitudes are a significant aspect of social emotional learning. Nonetheless, many people regard attitudes as private affairs that are not a legitimate part of education. Although the coercive manipulation of personal attitudes has no place in education, generally it is helpful for people to freely explore their attitudes, to gain insight and enlightened self-control, and to discover how their attitudes may limit or distort the scope or quality of their performance (1987, pp. 20-21).

By completing prework that requires ranking, or placement on an attitude scale, or sentence-completion, team members assess their individual assumptions in isolation. Through discussion of soundest assumptions in light of available information, team members then explore implications of their assumptions. "The approach to comparison learning applied to subjective processes is often experienced by learners as freeing them from constraints they previously had not recognized (1987, p. 21)."

In the challenges presented by multiple cultures on the flight deck, an important contributor to conflict (both positive and negative) resides in different assumptions and values. Often, individuals will argue as if there is a right and wrong answer, when in fact, the answer is right or wrong based on the individual’s value system. When the assumptions and values are surfaced and discussed, there can be openness as learners move toward resolution (if necessary) by creating a different framework in which to think about the solution. A superordinate goal often provides a framework that reduces the tension in opposing assumptions. A learning transportation system for intercultural understanding could be facilitated with a Clarifying Attitudes Design. The Clarifying Attitudes Design encourages the individuals to place assumptions and values on scales and use the scales as vehicles to compare and contrast in a more objective context.

The Performance Judging Design (PJD) is proposed as an alternative to the pedagogical approach used by many CRM instructions in simulator de-briefing session of behavior captured by videotape.

This design is intended to help learners exercise individual responsibility for their team members’ skill development. First, participants develop the effectiveness criteria that apply in performing a particular skill. These criteria enable learners to judge the quality of their own performance so that they need not rely on others to evaluate the soundness of that performance . . . they can also monitor their performance outside the learning situation. Second, each person produces initial evidence of his or her skill level, which can then be compared with the levels achieved by others and which can be judged by the learners themselves in terms of the previously established criteria. Individuals also receive colleague critiques of their product or performance. By acting on these specific suggestions, learners are likely to reach a level of effectiveness that satisfies the criteria (1987, p. 19).

Additional important perspectives are gained by bringing the videotaped behaviors into a larger audience. Ineffective behaviors heretofore unnoticed due to familiarity may be areas for improvement when viewed by individuals either within the organization or external to the organization (researchers and/or other learners). The design necessarily incorporates additional skills practice in the areas of inquiry, advocacy, conflict, critique, and decision making.

Team members in GRID^â CRM seminar learning teams tend to disavow or discount certain negative descriptions of both their own behavior and that of others. However, when the team members view themselves on video enacting a flight scenario, the awareness of one’s own behavior is often startling. Video is used for simple flight simulations or scenario enactment, where the impact on the participants can be a significant learning event.

The use of video during normal team learning activities can provide both examples of the impact of behavior on others as well as valuable stimulus for critique and feedback. More often than not, the behaviors captured by video during team interactions in a CRM seminar are not remarkably different from the behaviors that are exhibited in the learners’ "real world" as reported by other members of the crew.

The pedagogical approach fails to meet the needs of the aviation industry. Effective aviation training is a multi-media show. The inclusion of methodologies that challenge the traditional pedagogical model can initiate a culture change toward more effective, systems learning. Aviation training can find significant assistance from existing learning resources and be applied to the complex systems driven by both present and future aviation.

Copyright © 1997 Ninth International Symposium on Aviation Psychology published by the Ohio State University Department of Aerospace Engineering, Applied Mechanics, and Aviation.

References

Aronson, E., and others. The Jigsaw Classroom. Beverly Hills, CA: Sage, 1978.

Blake, Robert R. and Mouton, Jane S. 1964, The Managerial Grid, Houston, TX: Gulf Publishing Co.

Blake, Robert R. and Mouton, Jane S. and Command/Leadership/Resource Management Steering Committee and Working Groups, United Airlines, 1982, Cockpit Resource Management, Denver, CO: Cockpit Resource Management.

Blake, Robert R. & Mouton, Jane S. & Command/Leadership/Resource Management Steering Committee and Working Groups United Airlines. (1990). GRID^® Cockpit Resource Management. (2nd ed.). Austin, TX: Scientific Methods, Inc.

Hackman, J. R. (1993). Teams, leaders, and organizations: new directions for crew-oriented flight training. In Wiener, E. L., Kanki, B. G.

Helmreich, R. L., (Eds.). Cockpit Resource Management (pp. 47-69). San Diego, CA: Academic Press, Inc.

Helmreich, R. L., Wiener, E. L., and Kanki, B. G. (1993). The future of crew resource management in the cockpit and elsewhere Wiener, E. L., Kanki, B. G., and Helmreich, R. L., (Eds.). Cockpit Resource Management (479-501), San Diego, CA: Academic Press, Inc.

Mouton, J. S. & Blake, R. R., Synergogy: a new strategy for education, training, and development. Austin, TX: Scientific Methods, Inc. (Original work published 1984).