Cockpit Resource Managment for teachers?

In reading the chapter titled "Staying on the same page: Choreographing Team Coordination", Vicente writes of the development of Cockpit Resource Management (CRM) within the airline industry. In a nutshell, CRM is a training program that was developed in response to the problems that arose from poor communication that was happening in the cockpit. Pilots were not being trained prior to that on how to communicate and delegate roles effectively in a crisis situation. He recounts the dramatic but tragic the story of a flight crew trying to figure out if a light bulb on the control panel in the cockpit was burnt out. Meanwhile the plane is not being flown by anyone and disturbingly enough the plane crashes killing 99 passengers. The concept of CRM has been applied to other fields including; the operating room and the control room of a nuclear power plant. Although these are very different fields than education, are there not components we could include in the training programs for teachers?

From my experience, training for teachers is a lot of theory and not a lot of practice. The most important part of my teacher training was when I actually ended up in the classroom. Situational type of learning provided me the opportunity to try and put theory into practice. For the most part I did not experience any crisis nor did I encounter too much difficulty as there was always my partner teacher to count on. Can teacher training be improved? Is it possible to incorporate some of the ideas that CRM introduces for teachers? My thought is yes.

What types of situations could a teacher encounter that may require some training? Here is a list of a variety of situations that a person who was designing a teacher training program might consider:

1. dealing with a defiant student,
2. being a sub and dealing with a defiant class,
3. being a sub and teaching outside of your area of expertise,
4. being a sub and not having a lesson plan,
5. planning a lesson in a particular setting/ booking the setting and then not have the setting available,
6. an accident in the lab,
7. an accident while on a field trip,
8. an incident on a field trip that is to happen over a number of days,
9. having a lesson planned and not having access to technology that you thought you would have access to ( Internet down, projector not working) etc. . .

There are so many situations as a teacher that you face that you do not have any training for. You muddle through, do your best and hope for the best. For the most part these are not life and death situations and thus teacher training does not pay attention to these situations.

There are other aspects of CRM that could be applied to teacher training. The idea of involving the video camera, and video taping a teachers lesson should be integral to the training program as well as part of an ongoing self evaluation of teacher practice. School leaders could have colleagues, or leadership video a lesson that a teacher presents and then debrief with the teacher immediately following the lesson. The teacher could take the opportunity to reflect on the video in the presence of the colleague or leadership. Initially there may be some reservations on the part of the teacher, but given the potential that this could become a part of  regular practice then it would gain greater acceptance particularly if there is a sense of  improvement in teaching practice as a whole.

CRM was a great idea for the airline industry and has applications much further abroad. I am not sure that CRM has been applied to the field of education but the potential is there. Improving teacher practice, providing greater training and as a result improving students outcomes. Teacher training needs to be constantly evaluated. Applying CRM to the field of education and teacher training could be a really good thing.

Vicente, Kim J. (2004). The Human Factor: Revolutionizing the Way We Live with Technology. Toronto: Vintage Canada