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FAA-H-8083-9B, Chapter 3

Chapter 3: The Learning Process

How people learn: learning theory, perception and insight, the laws of learning, domains and levels of learning, skill acquisition, errors, and memory.

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Chapter summary

Chapter 3 is a basic guide in applied educational psychology. It opens by following a learner from her first flight to the day before her practical test, showing how memorized facts became understanding, awkward skills became smooth, and errors became smaller and quickly corrected. The handbook defines learning as a change in behavior that results from experience, and it introduces the theories behind that change: classical and operant conditioning, social learning, behaviorism, and cognitive theory, including information processing and constructivism. Constructivism supports the teaching of higher order thinking skills, which aviation calls aeronautical decision-making, and scenario-based training is presented as a primary way to develop them.

All learning begins with perception, and the chapter lists the factors that affect it: the physical organism, goals and values, self-concept, time and opportunity, and the element of threat. Fear narrows the perceptual field, so threatening a learner does not work. Insight is the grouping of perceptions into meaningful wholes, and creating it is one of the instructor's major responsibilities. Knowledge is acquired through memorization, understanding, and application, aided by concept learning and schemas. Thorndike's laws of readiness, exercise, and effect, together with primacy, intensity, and recency, describe conditions that strengthen or weaken learning.

Bloom's domains of learning are cognitive, affective, and psychomotor. The practical learning levels are rote, understanding, application, and correlation, and correlation should be the objective of aviation instruction. Learning is purposeful, a result of experience, multifaceted, and an active process. The chapter surveys learning styles, including right brain and left brain preferences, holistic and serialistic learners, and visual, auditory, and kinesthetic learners, and notes that a variety of styles should be addressed in every lesson.

Skill knowledge develops through three stages: cognitive, associative, and automatic response. Progress depends on practice, follows the power law of practice, and often levels off in a learning plateau that the instructor should explain as normal and temporary. Deliberate practice targets specific goals with specific feedback, blocked practice improves short-term performance but not long-term learning, and random practice produces better retention. The chapter then covers putting skills together: attention switching, distractions and interruptions, fixation and inattention, and how to build good scenarios.

Errors are a natural part of human performance. Slips are errors of action and mistakes are errors of thought, and errors can be reduced through learning and practice, taking time, checking, reminders, routines, and raising awareness. Memory is described as sensory memory, short-term memory, and long-term memory. Forgetting is explained by retrieval failure, fading, interference, and repression or suppression, and retention improves with praise, association, favorable attitudes, use of all senses, and meaningful repetition. The chapter closes with mnemonics, transfer of learning, habit formation, and the reminder that no single learning theory fits every learner or situation.

Main topics

  • Learning theory: conditioning, social learning, behaviorism, and cognitive theory
  • Constructivism, higher order thinking skills (HOTS), and scenario-based training
  • Perception, the factors that affect it, and insight
  • Thorndike's laws of learning plus primacy, intensity, and recency
  • Domains of learning and the rote, understanding, application, and correlation levels
  • Characteristics of learning and learning styles
  • Stages of skill acquisition, learning plateaus, and types of practice
  • Task management, distractions, interruptions, fixation, and inattention
  • Kinds of errors and ways to reduce, recover from, and learn from them
  • Memory, forgetting, retention, mnemonics, and transfer of learning

Key terms

Classical conditioning
Learning based on an association made between a neutral environmental stimulus and a natural stimulus, as in Pavlov's experiment pairing a metronome with feeding.
Operant conditioning
Learning in which the association is made between a behavior and the consequences of that behavior, so the learner predicts that future behaviors will bring similar consequences.
Social learning
Learning by observation. Bandura's theory describes four stages: attention, retention, reproduction, and motivation.
Behaviorism
A theory that explains behavior entirely in terms of observable and measurable responses to stimuli, stressing reinforcement provided by someone other than the learner.
Cognitive theory
A theory focused on what goes on inside the mind. Learning is a change in the way a learner thinks, understands, or feels, not just a change in behavior.
Constructivism
A philosophy of learning holding that learners do not acquire knowledge and skills passively but actively build them based on their experiences.
Higher order thinking skills (HOTS)
The analysis, synthesis, and evaluation levels of Bloom's Taxonomy, commonly called aeronautical decision-making in aviation.
Scenario-based training (SBT)
A training system that uses a structured script of real-world scenarios to address flight training objectives in an operational environment.
Perception
The reception of stimuli through the senses together with the meaning a person gives to those sensations. Perceptions are the basis of all learning.
Insight
The grouping of perceptions into meaningful wholes, so the learner understands how each factor relates to and affects the others.
Rote learning
The lowest level of learning: the ability to repeat something that has been taught without understanding it or being able to apply it.
Correlation level of learning
The level at which a learner can associate an element that has been taught with other segments or blocks of learning. It should be the objective of aviation instruction.
Learning plateau
A leveling off in apparent progress after an initial period of rapid improvement. It is normal, usually temporary, and does not necessarily mean learning has stopped.
Slip
An error of action that occurs when a person plans to do one thing but inadvertently does something else.
Mistake
An error of thought that occurs when a person plans to do the wrong thing and is successful, often because of gaps or misconceptions in understanding.
Transfer of learning
The ability to apply knowledge or procedures learned in one context to new contexts. Transfer is positive when it helps a new task and negative when it hinders it.

Revision quiz

10 questions. Pick an answer to see whether it is right and why.

Answered 0 of 10
  1. 1.According to Bandura's Social Learning Theory as described in the handbook, what are the four stages of social learning?
  2. 2.An instructor insists that a learner use the correct technique on the very first attempt at a new maneuver because faulty habits are hard to undo later. Which principle of learning is the instructor applying?
  3. 3.Which level of learning does the handbook say should be the objective of aviation instruction?
  4. 4.During steep turns, a learner no longer works from memorized steps. She notices an altitude loss, corrects it, and returns to the bank angle, but the skill still demands deliberate attention. Which stage of skill acquisition does this describe?
  5. 5.Compared with blocked practice, what does the handbook say about random practice?
  6. 6.After landing on runway 30 for many days in a row, a learner is assigned runway 12 but turns to enter the pattern for runway 30 out of habit. What kind of error is this?
  7. 7.A learner's landing performance has stopped improving after weeks of rapid progress, and he is getting discouraged. Which instructor response is consistent with the handbook?
  8. 8.Which statement about short-term memory is consistent with the handbook?
  9. 9.How does the element of threat affect perception, according to the handbook?
  10. 10.Which levels of Bloom's Taxonomy of the Cognitive Domain make up the higher order thinking skills (HOTS)?

This page is a study aid written from Aviation Instructor's Handbook (FAA-H-8083-9B), Chapter 3. The handbook is the authoritative source; read the full chapter in the official FAA PDF.

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