By Kayla D. Taylor and Dr. Lindsey Ives

Effective writing is a crucial skill that facilitates the clarity and effectiveness of safety reports, allowing practitioners to act upon documentation explaining the circumstances surrounding an event of concern. The aviation industry is no exception: All types of aviation personnel are encouraged, and often expected, to write incident reports when a situation could have led to damage, death, or injury. Introducing writing across the curriculum (WAC) initiatives at flight schools may be an effective way to prepare emerging aviation professionals with adaptable writing skills to compose incident report narratives that can facilitate an audience’s understanding of a safety-related event.

Over the last several months, numerous high-profile aviation accidents have placed new and continuing emphasis on the importance of systematic safety reporting in the aviation industry. In the wake of such accidents, safety practitioners from the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) initiate extensive investigations to understand how and why the accidents occurred, seeking to prevent future tragedies in the industry. NTSB investigations leverage the collaborative efforts of various aviation professionals who have been trained to document each accident with a specific purpose, audience, scope, and style (NTSB, 2000) in mind during the writing process. These characteristics ultimately constitute the unique genre of aviation accident reports.

Accidents are a worst-case scenario for the aviation industry, and they expose a critical need for expeditious reporting to promote safe operations for both crew and passengers (Xiong et al., 2024). One way that practitioners aim to prevent accidents is to document and disseminate information from incident reports, which describe events that affected or could have affected safety operations (Transportation, 2011) but do not result in death, damage, or significant injury. Anecdotal narratives from involved parties or witnesses are generally included in these reports (NTSB, 2000), in addition to the “who, what, when, where, and why.”

There is a variety of ways that aviation personnel can submit incident reports, including through NASA’s voluntary Aviation Safety Reporting System (ASRS; Hooey, 2022) or through internal, company- or institution-specific safety management systems (SMS; Thomas & Lee, 2015). However, the amount of guidance conveyed regarding how to write incident report narratives varies widely across organizations. NTSB (2000) guidelines thoroughly describe the content and structure expected in their professional aviation accidentreports, but incident reporting frameworks often lack genre-specific writing guidance altogether. In the absence of clear guidance or writing expectations for this relatively complex rhetorical setting, individuals who attempt to submit incident reports may not compose reports that clearly convey what occurred during the incident. This may prolong practitioners’ efforts to mitigate safety concerns within the industry.

Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University (ERAU) is one of the largest accredited flight training institutions in the world (Byrnes et al., 2022), and we have each spent considerable time teaching flight students how to write at Embry-Riddle. During this time, our colleagues in the aviation-related departments consistently highlighted that writing is a vital skill for emerging aviation professionals, reiterating the sentiments of leaders and governing entities in the aviation industry (Federal Aviation Administration [FAA], 2003; International Civil Aviation Organization [ICAO], 2013). We simultaneously heard complaints across campus that students struggled to adapt the writing skills they learned in their general education composition courses to the expectations in their aviation courses and flight training.

As proponents of writing across the curriculum (WAC) and writing in the disciplines (WID) practices, we began to investigate if and how WAC/WID programs had been adopted at other flight institutions. Needless to say, WAC and WID practices at flight institutions are incredibly niche, and there are very few examples to draw on. According to Ruiz (2003), of 115 University Aviation Association (UAA) institutions surveyed (with only 37 respondents), only 27% of respondents indicated that their flight institution had an established WAC program. Shortly thereafter, Ruiz (2004) found that department chairs at collegiate aviation institutions believed that WAC programs in their institution had improved students’ writing abilities, aligning with previous research on the benefits of WAC and WID. This perceived lack of WAC/WID adoption at collegiate flight institutions inspired us to propose a WAC-focused quality enhancement plan (QEP) as part of Embry-Riddle’s reaccreditation process through the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools Commission on Colleges (SACSCOC) to help students adapt their writing knowledge and skills to respond “both to discipline- and industry-specific demands” (ERAU, 2023, p. 1).

Our QEP proposal was accepted in 2020, and we have been working with an interdisciplinary group of faculty volunteers to implement curriculum changes across Embry-Riddle’s three campuses (Daytona Beach, Prescott, and Worldwide/Online). The QEP will modify current writing assignments in undergraduate courses, including flight courses, to promote student understanding of writing for specific audiences, purposes, and contexts (ERAU, 2023). Faculty will also provide explicit support to demonstrate writing standards in their highly specialized fields. In these ways, we hope to help students transition from writing in academic settings to writing in professional workplaces, including the aviation industry.

As an extension of the QEP, we recently led a study to understand the acquisition and subsequent progression of writing skills throughout our student pilots’ education at the Embry-Riddle Daytona Beach campus. Our study examined how supplemental genre-specific guidance provided at the time of writing affected the writing quality of incident report narratives composed by pilot students at Embry-Riddle. We recruited 159 participants, who were randomly assigned into three groups with differing levels of guidance: no guidance, guidance in the form of bullet-point guidelines from NASA’s ASRS, and guidance in the form of incident report narrative examples from the ASRS. Each student watched the same video of an in-flight incident and was asked to compose an incident report narrative as if they were the pilot in the video using the guidance they were provided.

After a calibration session centered on WAC theory and WAC/WID pedagogical approaches, three aviation subject matter experts (SMEs) assessed the quality of the narratives according to the American Association of Colleges and Universities (AAC&U) Valid Assessment of Learning in Undergraduate Education (VALUE) written communication rubric (AAC&U, 2009). Much to our surprise, our results showed no statistically significant differences between students’ scores. While our use of the AAC&U rubric was a novel and unique application in the context of aviation undergraduate students’ written work, it may not have been a powerful enough measurement device to capture nuanced variations between narratives. We also recognize that additional faculty or expert-led instruction may need to accompany (hopefully, in advance of) any kind of written guidance provided to individuals at the time of writing incident reports because guidelines or examples may not be useful for improving writing quality if used as stand-alone tools. Further research is necessary to provide additional insight regarding how WAC and WID pedagogies can aid in effective and efficient safety operations in the aviation industry.

We also acknowledge the powerful potential of artificial intelligence (AI) in the context of writing incident reports and evaluating writing quality. AI-driven approaches, including natural language processing (NLP), may provide a more targeted, objective, and scalable means of assessing the writing quality of aviation incident report narratives composed by student pilots…or even assisting in the initial composition of incident reports! A fine-tuned NLP model may be able to classify incident report narratives into ordinal categories established by an evaluation rubric, thus easing the feedback burden on instructors and establishing a more standardized approach for evaluating student pilot writing.

Our study (and our QEP) aimed to address an evident gap in the academic literature regarding writing in the context of aviation education. We strongly encourage the continued examination of WAC philosophies in aviation, and we contend that genre-based practices can also be examined in other fields where incident reporting constitutes a crucial part of safety operations. WAC/WID practices are still fundamental components in writing education, regardless of the professional context in which students may find themselves after graduation.

References

American Association of Colleges and Universities [AAC&U]. (2009). VALUE rubrics – written communication. https://www.aacu.org/initiatives/value-initiative/value- rubrics/value-rubrics-written-communication

Byrnes, K. P., Rhoades, D. L., Williams, M. J., Arnaud, A. U., & Schneider, A. H. (2022). The effect of a safety crisis on safety culture and safety climate: The resilience of a flight training organization during COVID-19. Transport Policy, 117, 181–191. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tranpol.2021.11.009

Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University [ERAU]. (2023). Writing matters quality enhancement plan (QEP). https://sacscoc.org/app/uploads/2023/04/Embry-Riddle-QEP-Executive-Summary-Public-Draft_Final.pdf

Federal Aviation Administration [FAA]. (2003, March 31). FAA writing standards. U.S. Department of Transportation. https://www.faa.gov/documentlibrary/media/order/branding_writing/order1000_36.pdf

Hooey, B. (2022, September 26). NASA ASRS video [Video]. Vimeo. https://vimeo.com/753958591?embedded=true&source=vimeo_logo&owner=176 089956

International Civil Aviation Organization [ICAO]. (2013). Manual of evidence-based training. https://skybrary.aero/sites/default/files/bookshelf/3177.pdf

National Transportation Safety Board [NTSB]. (2000, March). Guidance on style for NTSB written products. https://www.governmentattic.org/30docs/NTSBwritigGuides_2014_2000.pdf

Ruiz, L. E. (2003). The prevalence of writing across the curriculum in collegiate aviation flight education. The Collegiate Aviation Review International, 21(1), 60–72. https://doi.org/10.22488/okstate.18.100319

Ruiz, L. E. (2004). Perceptions of communication training among collegiate aviation flight educators. Journal of Air Transportation, 9(1), 36–57. https://www.proquest.com/scholarly-journals/perceptions-communication- training-among/docview/232857598/se-2

Thomas, B., & Lee, C. (2015). SMS implementation in a Part 141 flight school. In A. J. Stolzer & J. J. Goglia (Eds.), Safety management systems in aviation (pp. 301– 324). CRC Press.

Transportation, 49 C.F.R. § 830.2. (2011). https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-49/subtitle-B/chapter-VIII/part-830/subpart-A/section-830.2

Xiong, M., Wang, H., Wong, Y. D., & Hou, Z. (2024). Enhancing aviation safety and mitigating accidents: A study on aviation safety hazard identification. Advanced Engineering Informatics, 62, Article 102732. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.aei.2024.102732

This blog post is based on work originally submitted by Kayla D. Taylor as a thesis for her Master of Science in Aviation at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, where she is now a Ph.D. student and Graduate Research Assistant. Lindsey Ives, Ph.D., is Professional Development Coordinator for Faculty and Part-time Instructor, Tacoma Community College.