TEXT I

Accreditation in Aviation

Marjo Mitsutomi and Jerry Platt University of Redlands (California)

Data

There is substantial anecdotal evidence to suggest that language miscommunication has been a contributing factor in several airplane crashes, and in even more nearmisses. Unfortunately, the coding mechanisms for recording cause of failure often obscure the role of language. Worse, there is evidence of deliberate withholding of such data, presumably to avoid increasing fears among an already skittish flying public. The result is surprisingly scant hard evidence to systematically support any claim that language communication “in global airspace is an important safety issue today”.

Growth

By contrast, there is substantial evidence to support the claim that “effective communication in global airspace … will become even more important tomorrow”. In projecting air traffic for the year 2026, the Boeing web site indicates that traffic within the Asia-Pacific region, with its great variety of native languages, will exceed air traffic within North America – the historically-dominant region that is comprised of but three native languages. Additionally, there are clear indicators that per capita air travel traffic, which increases with wealth, is about to undergo dramatic shifts in demography.

Accreditation

The goal of accreditation is to ensure that the education provided by schools, institutions and programs meets the minimum acceptable levels of quality. The value proposition of Aviation English is best advanced through an accreditation process for its training programs. Just what is accreditation? Why does it matter? How can it help?

Accreditation is “the stamp of approval” for schools and/ or programs in a particular discipline or industry. Institutions that seek accreditation recognize its importance by agreeing to a set of commonly adopted industry standards for quality assurance. The accrediting process is done by one’s peers. Accrediting agencies are private educational associations of regional, national or international scope. The agencies develop evaluation criteria and conduct peer evaluations to assess whether or not those criteria are met. In terms of the so-called Level-4 proficiency benchmark, accreditation can address both general and specific questions of common interest.

The Education Specialty Analogy

Accreditation is a common element of education systems all over the world. Some accreditation agencies are general, and assess overall performance, while others are specific to a particular task.

Our interest is in a specific, specialized, programmatic accreditation. It would not assess the overall effectiveness of a flight school, an air traffic controller program, or an English language school. Instead, it would focus only on the Aviation English component of that school or program, and assess it only with respect to the stated ICAO (International Civil Aviation Organization) standards and benchmarks for Aviation English. An analogy may help.

There are thousands of universities around the world, and most countries have national or regional accreditation bodies to evaluate the overall effectiveness of the universities in meeting their educational goals. Many of these universities have schools of business as one patch of its educational fabric. There are only two global bodies for the accreditation of business programs within universities – EQUIS and AACSB. These two bodies accredit the business training subset of an institution, according to quite specific global standards that have been set by peers at business schools worldwide.

Accreditation for Aviation English It is proposed that an international body be established to accredit schools and programs that purport to train and prepare pilots and controllers to be proficient in Aviation English by ICAO standard

Necessary and/or Desirable Ingredients The accreditation process should examine not only the measurement instrument(s) and output from the testing process for demonstrating proficiency in Aviation English, but also the inputs (recruitment; student support; organization structure; financial resources; personnel) and the processes (training; testing; certification). It is essential that accreditation be established as a holistic enterprise.

While it is both premature and presumptuous to specify standards today that should be set in agreement among peer schools and programs at some future date, there are certain ingredients that transcend specific criteria and can help guide in the formulation and establishment of the accreditation unit. It should be an independent, not-for-profit federation of schools and programs, with broad global representation that reflects the rich diversity in native languages and cultures across member states. Accreditation must be limited to Aviation English, and must be based upon a peer-review process that emphasizes absolute standards for performance while also recognizing relative advancement toward the absolute standard, thereby acting as a supportive organization that actively helps all programs improve.