Translating bumblebee dialect…
The American Institute for Avalanche Research & Education (AIARE) trains avalanche practitioners to effectively teach recreational students.In this model, avalanche professionals can enroll in an Instructor Training Course (ITC) and subsequent Course Leader Training (CLT), where subject matter experts are given tools and practice to deliver AIARE recreational curriculum in a productive learning environment.In 2018, AIARE revised the methodology, curriculum, and sequence for training avalanche education instructors to correspond with two newly introduced levels of professional training, the PRO 1 and PRO 2, which are prerequisites for those courses, respectively.Since then, AIARE has trained 726 instructors and 250 course leaders to enter the avalanche education ecosystem.AIARE's evaluation of its course leader training revealed performance and effectiveness trends relevant to the entire industry.This paper will review the education research and MEL frameworks utilized to evaluate course leader performance after training, the effectiveness of AIARE's training curriculum, and the training process from prerequisites to precourse work to in-person training to continuing education.AIARE's evaluation inspired a three-phase adaptation and update process, which this paper proposes as a model for similar training curriculum updates.We designed a new portrait of training proficiency and corresponding performance criteria based on the most obvious imperatives from research and program evaluation.We deployed three different versions of the CLT curriculum, based on three different design philosophies, and analyzed the performance of those programs.Lastly, we hybridized the successes and addressed the challenges of each curriculum, combining them into a single updated curriculum that will be uniformly instructed beginning in the 2026-27 season.In order to instigate a process as painstaking as program evolution, we propose our research and design process as one pathway others might emulate or improve upon.
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