I watched a high-school senior, presumably an expert rider, teaching a 6-year-old to ride a horse. I asked her if she wanted some feedback on her teaching and she said yes, so I’m writing this for her and sharing it in case it is useful to anyone else.
Horse riding for beginners is a bit like flying in that people tend to develop tunnel vision and don’t have a lot of spare mental capacity to listen and process. The instructor thus must limit comments and corrections to only the bare essentials. The inputs to a helicopter are power (collective pitch) and attitude (pitch and bank). It is seldom helpful to say anything except suggestions regarding how to adjust these inputs. I’m not sure what the inputs to a horse in English riding, but it is probably worth figuring out what the most important ones are and limiting one’s corrections/suggestions to those inputs. “Sit up straighter” and “shorter reins,” for example, could be helpful.
While the beginner 6-year-old was on the horse, presumably just barely holding everything together, the teacher started a discussion about what had gone wrong in a previous maneuver (letting the horse turn himself right instead of forcing him to turn left). This probably could have been summarized as “Don’t let the animal win; you’re the boss!” but the real issue was dwelling on the unsuccessful past. Perhaps there is a place for a post-ride debrief but it doesn’t work to try to debrief while still at the controls in a moving aircraft so I don’t think it would work while sitting on a live animal. A deeper issue is positive reinforcement in training, which is equally important for humans and animals. From my “Teaching Flying” article:
I stood in a lift line at the Sante Fe ski resort once. A father and daughter were in front of us. The father said to the child “The reason why you failed…” and was interrupted by a veteran instructor next to me. He said “Don’t tell her why she failed; tell her why she succeeded.”
Perhaps more experience riders can comment with what they consider to be the most important tips for a novice riding instructor.
I am not good rider but have ridden a few horses. The first few rides I remember hanging on and letting the horse drive mostly with a big western saddles for me to hang on to. My sister taught me and she mostly said stuff before I got on the horse and then told to hang on after that. She was mostly worried about me falling off. Then after the first few rides she gave me lessons on steering with my legs and steering the reins so I had to become the boss of the horse. But then she let me do the riding and did not talk to me much except to tell me to hang on (again) and “be the boss”.
And when I was ski instructor I also learned that people learn sports activities in many different ways. Some people are “do it” learners and have to actually do an activity to understand what it is. Others people are “listeners” and learn by having someone tell them how to do something. Others are “see stuff” people and learn by watching people do stuff. And some people are just “thinkers” and need to do some of the above and then “think about it” to learn the activity. And lastly most people are really a blend of all the above.
So to be good teacher you need to show someone how to ride, tell them how to ride, let them ride a little and then give them time to think about what they did while they were riding. Then do it again and again and again until they learn.
“Don’t tell her why she failed; tell her why she succeeded.” Really? I was under the impression that we learn from our mistakes (unless we are too damn dumb) but success is sterile. I can see that “tell her what she did wrong and what she did right” might help, but unless someone is motivated to learn I doubt it does matter, and if one is honestly interested to learn being told what was wrong is more useful than being told what was right.
Admittedly my learning experience has been from people whose attitude was and is “do you want to learn of feel good about it? pick one” so I am not that fond of this positive reinforcement stuff. Wanna learn? Work hard. You made these mistakes, this is how you fix them. No, you will not manage to fix them the first time around. Or the tenth. I did not receive positive reinforcement but I did receive bottomless patience and reasonable expectations about my ability to progress.
Positive reinforcement aside I think your advice is very sound.
Federico: I don’t suggest positive reinforcement so that students will feel better but because in my experience trying to review a failed maneuver is seldom helpful, especially when in a moving aircraft. What is most valuable is for the beginner to see and remember what it looks like when everything is going well.
Great approach. Your blog on Teaching Flying is worth emulating in other domains.
Regarding Federico’s fondness for negative feedback, there’s not a lot of evidence that criticism speeds up learning. On the other hand, animal trainers stick purely to the positive “behavior sculpting.” The NYT ran a very popular article 10 years back from Shamu’s trainer, who applied the same techniques to her husband:
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/25/fashion/25love.html?ex=1169438400&en=3edcee0d461222fa&ei=5087&excamp=mkt_shamu&_r=0
I think that discussing what could have been done better after the flying (or riding) is over can be productive. For example, after an unstable approach I might tell a student “That could have been a lot easier if you’d S-turned and dived without power until 500′ AGL and then set the aircraft up with the usual configuration, including power, so that the last 500′ of descent were in the familiar configuration. If you’d been on a short runway it would have been good to go-around but since you were at a big airport you could have accepted touching down 1500′ down the runway.” (About 500-1000′ is standard for a touchdown point.) There is some negative feedback in there (the approach was unstable and less than great) but it is mostly about what to do next time rather than what not to do. And the discussion is occurring at a time when everyone is comfortably parked on a sofa at the FBO.
Phil, unless the past tense is used differently in the colonise than in the UK the example you gave was of a debriefing after the fact, not of a on the spot feedback. Hence that was a feel good/feel bad situation, not a reinforcement situation. Personally I am pretty comfortable with no feedback == I’m doing it right, feedback == I am making a mistake.
@ Paul: excellent article, I will share it with my wife. Maybe I am splitting hairs here, but there is a huge difference between training a third party to do what *I* want and teaching a third party to do what the third party wants to learn. Very different pedagogical situation. Using the same feedback style might, or might not, work.
Hey Phil,
I have been involved in amateur Muay Thai fights for a while now, both as a participant and as a corner/coach and have come to a similar conclusion. After one of your teammates has been punched in the head continuously for ~2-3 minutes, sitting them down and talking serious technique to prepare them for the next ~2-3 minute barrage is just wasting your breath.
Boil it down to 1-2 essential concepts you can say in 5 words or less. Repeat them twice, and that’s it. (I imagine instead of “use less power” in helicopter terms, it’s “keep moving to your left” when getting clobbered by a right handed fighter).
The day after is the time for review, analysis and practice in techniques we need to succeed. Not in the heat of the moment.
Hi Philip,
Thank you for writing up this article! I have only been teaching horseback riding for a few years, but I have had more than ten years of experience as a riding student. Throughout the years, riding different horses and working with different coaches, I realized that many individuals have their own style of instructing. My current coach is a fan of raising her voice in a very intimidating manner. With every lesson I teach, I work hard to improve my abilities to communicate effectively with my student. So, I am so very appreciative of your feedback and advice. In fact, I implemented it in my next lesson after talking with you, and had a lot of success. I thought about the bare minimum instruction needed for the rider to have a safe, enjoyable, learning experience. Like many of the instructors commenting, I boiled each instruction down to a few words, and just repeated the mantra for my student. I realized that as a young instructor, I do far more talking than I need to, and this distracts from my student’s concentration. I am the kind of person that likes to talk through things in great detail before trying them- or after trying them. I like a good de-breifing. However, it hadn’t even occurred to me that not every person has this type of learning style. So, going forwards, I will try to tailor my instruction to the needs of my student. Thanks again for this great piece and I look forward to seeing you around the barn!
You’re welcome, Maddie. I didn’t want to rat you out publicly! You’ve obviously got a great future as a teacher since you’re trying to improve. Come out to the flight school and we’ll go up in the helicopter!
(Regarding your own experience with instructors… You can sit on or walk a horse at this point probably with about 1% of your brain, leaving the other 99% of your mental capacity to process what someone is saying to you. That allows you to learn from an instructor with almost any style. But your beginner students might be using 99% of their brains just to hang on in what to you is a ridiculously simple situation. When you’re an expert it is easy to forget how tough something is for a beginner.)