Situational Awareness

[Orange Anchor]

It's in the same category as judgment -- that can't be taught, either.

Again we disagree. It may NOT be being taught and most of us cringe when we hear cognition and thinking about thinking and learning models for decision making but the info and the templates are out there.

Both SA and judgment require experience, which neophyte pilots don't have and can't obtain in any way except through time in the saddle.

Then we may go 'green' by tossing out NTSB and safety reports 'cause you gotta be there to learn.

We artificially endow students with the ability to get that experience by having them fly with an instructor --

We also create rules and procedures that reduce the demand for students to have wide SA

So what are these devices doing if not helping to teach and/or demonstrate SA?

It doesn't actually increase SA in and of itself, but it is certainly an enabler that assists students in building their own SA.

Enabling that assists? Is that like teaching? (BTW, thanks for the exchange. Good to bat stuff around)

We do NOT teach leadership and we do not teach elements of SA and we certainly do not teach anything about 'cognition' or decision making. And yes, there is a lot of babble out there but if we are to cut through that we are going to have to learn the terms and use them. It is really no different from learning what LNAV, VNAV, RVSM and other aviation terms mean when trying to learn our tasks. And I will grant that there is a lot of blather that passes for CRM and error management training. But we can't learn SA any other way than being in the saddle? If that is true, we are in for a bad ride as the military cuts flying time.

 

[Hacker15e]

The best way I heard it described was that SA was like being in love.

You can talk about (and learn) what the elements/traits of it are, and you know it when you see it...but you can't teach someone to do it.

 

[shdw]

I would argue that you two, hacker and orange, are in agreement.

Hacker: "practice certain tasks outside the cockpit to help build their proficiency...allows them to get beyond the task saturation many students face...an enabler that assists students in building their own SA."


Apply what USMC said about working memory to your comment hacker and we have a way, not to teach SA, but to allow it to happen. You cannot be aware of something you don't know you need to be aware of. So by doing "part-task training" as you put it, we give them the required tools (awarenesses) to learn SA.


Orange: "A great tool for SA...checklists...understanding workload...promotes SA."

Do you see how you agree? You two are both discussing teaching tools that promote SA, not actually teaching SA.


OTOH I would also argue that teaching the tools required to learn a task is how one teaches any task. This is a rule not exclusive to flight training IMO.

 

[Orange Anchor]

I would argue that you two, hacker and orange, are in agreement.

We are. SA is, after all, a fuzzy concept of how it works but the main thing is that one has it or one doesn't. Also, there is individual SA and crew SA. For that reason, many airlines now have the FO fly and the Capt decide when there is an emergency. Studies show that more often than not when the Capt loses SA, the crew eventually loses SA.

Do you see how you agree? You two are both discussing teaching tools that promote SA, not actually teaching SA.

For the sake of argument, I will concede the point. But to take the issue a bit farther. We all develop heuristics or mental shortcuts that allow us to move from step 1, 2 and skip the next steps to arrive at a solution at point 10. Most of the time this works (even if it leads us to wrong assumptions about what our spouse is really trying to say or do). And, thus a game like chess or any game that requires summing up the current situation, projecting that information into the future and devising a plan for the future is an excellent tool.