2026 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Aviation education has a well-established history of providing students the route to technically proficient pilot and maintenance technician careers. However, as the industry has evolved, degrees in management and other social science–related aviation paths have emerged, providing comprehensive insights into aviation development and fostering critical thinking skills needed for rapidly changing real-world environments.
Currently, there is an immense industry focus on finding new ways to place people on pathways to airline careers, with a predominant emphasis on generating career pilots. However, much less attention is given to developing the instructors who educate and train those students. Establishing a pathway for individuals passionate about both teaching and aviation—creating a professional field of aviation educators—is equally important. Yet the only structured emphasis in this area continues to be on producing Certified Flight Instructors (CFIs).
Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) regulations for CFI development focus primarily on teaching flight skills, and there is only a single 50-question test from an FAA textbook covering basic behavioral skills and best teaching practices. Traditionally, flight instructors are trained mainly to meet regulatory requirements, with limited emphasis on the science and art of instruction itself. In the airline training environment, the Advanced Qualification Program (AQP) has fundamentally changed the idea of training and provided a link between an academic-oriented university flight program and the airline job—one of the key reasons the R-ATP practice of exchanging flight hours for aviation credit hours is accepted. Implemented in 2025, the FAA established a protocol allowing CFIs to teach prospective CFIs with fewer total hours in exchange for participation in an approved program focusing on educational practices. Outlined in Advisory Circular 61-145, the Enhanced Flight Instruction Qualification Training Program (EFIQTP) included requirements such as 25 hours of dedicated ground instruction on how to be an effective instructor.
The pathway to education as a career is well identified in many other performance- or technical-based fields such as music, engineering, or technology, where students can receive specific education degrees in those fields. Yet despite the necessity of understanding basic educational principles, aviation academics lack a specific pathway to aviation education. Therefore, this proposed study will address that gap and pursue two objectives:
1. To develop a framework for an aviation education degree field as a potential solution for flight instruction and developing technical educators, through a survey of STEM and applied-focused degree fields where education curricula have been well established.
2. To compare the Federal Aviation Administration’s educational skill development guidance under the newly established EFIQTP with best practices from other education-focused academic curricula.
The outcomes of this study may guide universities and flight programs in designing curricula that prepare more capable aviation educators. In doing so, it may support a long-term strategy for academic institutions to improve instructional standards, prepare instructors to educate the future aviation workforce, and sustain the aviation talent pipeline.