The more you teach the more you'll see there is no magic bullet to make students get it right, first try, every time. Having rock solid academic knowledge of what you're teaching isn't good enough.
First let me say this, when I started this post I had absolutely no intention of it turning into an argument pertaining to basic physical law. The intention was to hear from some of you guys different practical ways to try and teach away this habit. I knew the academics behind it coming into this thread and wasn't looking to discuss that.
This is why early on I mentioned trying a constant pitch approach to solidify that power really can get you altitude even on short final. I also spoke of flying the flare so they could get behind the power curve low to the ground and still have the knowledge and instincts to shove the nose forward and increase power to avoid touchdown. My hope was that people would expand upon this and give some other ideas relating to this, more experiments since that is really all they are to a student.
IMO you need an academic understanding of this only for the purpose of making yourself do it the first few times. I personally don't teach my students to understand all the academics behind it, that would be ridiculous, I explain them once or twice before the flight(s) where we focus on demonstrate them. Once you actually see it work in the real world I believe it helps to solidify the knowledge discussed on the ground. Much like a science experiment, discuss how and why it works, and then do some practical experiments to prove it. It is these experiments that I was hoping to get more insight on.
I haven't, or at least I don't think I have, claimed that knowing these academics is the end all be all here and will save every pilot. That being said I can't see how anyone can argue against teaching within the bounds of physical law first, both academia and practical experimentation, before teaching other methods.
On another note, you speak of teaching experience as if the only kind of teaching is related to airplanes. I spent many years teaching juggling, skiing, and various other basic sports to special education kids. I was a swim instructor giving private and group lessons for almost 10 years. In college I had a class designed for me and worked one on one with a teacher of 40+ years on teaching habits, psychology behind teaching, and practical application by assisting her in her college algebra class. Now I am a flight instructor.
Does this make me the best teacher ever, of course not, but I understood long ago that while there is no one way to teach everyone (which I discussed earlier with multiple intelligence's and such), there are right ways to teach things and wrong ways. I also know that you have to break everything down piece by piece and try to put it together in a correct and organized fashion if you have any expectation of getting it across to your student. To do this requires a teacher to have an impeccable knowledge of what they are teaching in this case physical law for the academic side.
If any procedure we teach can be wrong at any time in any phase of flight than you are doing exactly what the FOI discusses heavily, a negative transfer of learning. In the case in question teaching anything other than pitch for airspeed power for altitude is nothing more than a negative transfer of learning. Source:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transfer_of_learning
PS Jrh would you mind giving the constant pitch approach and flying the flare a shot and report back and let me know how it works? Also whatever else you do, as I stated before this is the purpose of this threat or at least was supposed to be, to get him to understand this concept? Thanks in advance.
That being said, I don't think it is entirely your fault since a CFI has been nothing more than a stepping stone for pilots since the beginning and is therefore not taken very seriously. 