Professional Documents
Culture Documents
CURRÍCULO DE
FORMACIÓN
03/01/2005
There are elements of traditional, borrowed, and historical curriculums that are
useful. The segments to be used must be dictated, like the rest of the
curriculum, by the outcome of curriculum development models. What matters
most in training content delivery is how it impacts service at the street.
CURRICULUM MODELS
Curriculum models are the tools used by management. Parameters for various models
are presented below.
Initial training
A get-started curriculum provides basic information about knowledge, required
skill sets, abilities, and values. It usually stands alone in development,
presentation, and management.
Retraining
This involves an in-service schedule to maintain skills and reintroduce what
people once knew, reinforce what they have neglected to apply, and provide
practice in infrequently used skills.
Continuing Training
This curriculum concentrates on changes in standards, practices, near-misses,
and accidents (inside and outside the organization), as well as internal changes
in procedures, rules, and the like.
Advance Training
Este currículo prepara a los bomberos para avanzar en los niveles de
responsabilidad dentro de la organización.
NEEDS OF THE TRAINEES
The training staff appraises the capabilities of the trainees entering the program.
Information on trainees’ potential learning rates can make a major contribution
to decisions on how to structure the curriculum. The characteristics of the
trainees are noted, as are any obvious egocentricisms. Even though the group
consists of successful people, some could have ego problems associated with
being students again. And, although their needs are important to curriculum
development, the needs of the job are paramount.
NEEDS OF THE JOB
This component can consume most of the time and resources devoted to
curriculum development. It requires job analysis, construct analysis, and risk
assessment. A job analysis is the systematic dissection of the job for the
purpose of determining the skills and the supporting of the knowledge required
to be successful on the job. Success includes job safety, efficiency, and
effectiveness. Job analysis is conducted by interviews, observations, and use of
subject-matter experts, or a combination of these methods.
Job analysis has the following limitations:
• It merely reflects what the firefighter does; it cannot tell you what the firefighter
should be doing.
• Given the rapid rate of change in our profession, a job analysis is out of date
on completion. If not continually updated, it becomes useless, even dangerous.
• A job analysis works best with hands-on firefighters. Its accuracy fades as job
tasks move up the scale to include functions such as monitoring and broad
decision making-for example, a captain’s job involves making decisions with
limited data in many cases, and a job analysis does not reflect what goes on in
the cognitive process required for the job.
The job analysis procedure was created to help decide what training was
needed in America’s first mechanized war, World War I. Several innovations
have been made over the decades.
The growing need to train people in monitoring and decision-making positions is
leading to the emerging field of construct analysis. It comes in part from
Australia and has potential for identifying cognitive processes in monitoring and
decision-making jobs. It is, however, far from a science. Nevertheless, if you are
in the position of having to establish requirements and expectations for a job
that entails few hands-on tasks and many monitoring and decision-making
tasks, construct analysis may help. This involves conducting in-depth interviews
with successful incumbents to identify some of the strategies they use in their
work.
Another available tool is risk assessment. In defining the needs of the job, risk
assessment can help you determine the frequency of decision-making in jobs
where the central functions are to evaluate, order, and structure inevitably
incomplete and conflicting knowledge for the purpose of making a correct
decision.
The job analysis team begins by identifying the major blocks of the job. Each
major block is broken into minor blocks and tasks. Each task is broken into
steps. Each step-along with a list of tools and equipment that must be used-is
broken into manipulations (skills) and what has to be known to perform the
manipulations (knowledge).
All job analyses must be validated. Some job analysis methods obtain a
cruciality rating of each task through the judgmental ranking of each with regard
to difficulty, frequency, and importance. The three rankings collapse into a
single criticality measure. Criticality ratings can be a tremendous aid to
instructors during course development.
RISK ASSESSMENT
A broad concept in the fire service, risk assessment in some places means
describing everything that could happen in the life of a firefighter generally and
what the consequences would be to the organization. In others, it is more
specific. Risk assessment can be used to help determine the frequency and
type of decision making in jobs where the central functions are to evaluate,
order, and structure inevitably incomplete and conflicting knowledge for the
purpose of making a correct decision. An expert on decision making might say
that all decisions are made under those conditions, but you know what is meant.
The other source of information in a risk assessment is the postmortems of
working fires and accidents, which often yield potentially misleading information
and usually have significant holes. Most are sanitized by the organization.
Interviewing survivors may yield flawed information because they may not
remember what occurred because of shock or a natural self-defensiveness.
With all the problems inherent in a risk analysis, interviews and reviews can
disclose tremendous content for simulation scenarios for training people
operating at the higher levels of decision making-that is, making judgments in
short time frames with limited options.
It all adds up. The needs of the job can be defined through job analysis, construct
analysis, and risk assessment. You then would know “how the job is.” The next
question is, “How should the job be?”
The unit of instruction format presented is more than a hybrid lesson plan,
although it does contain familiar parts. This format is based on the best current
knowledge of structuring learning for the adult mind and has proven itself over
the years.
A training management function needs to take place after an instructor and a writer have
drafted a unit of instruction. The draft is circulated to the user group for review of
learning objectives, technical information, references, and manner of instruction. The
reviews are returned to the instructor for resolution of comments. Following the usual
rewrites, all involved give written authorization by signing off on the cover sheet of the
unit of instruction. The review is another way of having the review group become
owners of the courses. The reviews also mean something to the trainees, who will see
the supervisor’s name on the units of instruction and will know that their boss approved
the content.
The format element for a unit of instruction includes the following:
• Title
• Objectives
• References
• Instructional materials and equipment
• Information sheets
• Assignment sheets
• Job sheets
• Handout sheets
• Performance evaluation.
Consider the simple structural lines of the first eight parts of a unit of instruction and
their contribution to efficiency and effective learning and teaching. Everyone knows
what is expected because of the objectives section. The information area gives the whys,
thus making what is learned transferable to other situations. The assignment and job
sheets cause the trainees to apply the information (the key to learning and retention) in a
practice, no-threat situation. All handouts are prepackaged. Then there is the last
section, which is kept under lock and key with limited access: performance evaluation.
PERFORMANCE EVALUATION
Evaluation is an extrapolation from the learning objectives. Face validity is
achieved by matching the test item to the objective, whether it is simple (“List
four parts.”) or difficult (“Under automobile accident conditions, give strategic
direction to the first arriving units.”).
Performance evaluations come in whatever form is needed: pencil and paper,
hands-on, simulation, interview, or a combination. Sometimes you may be
tempted not to have pencil-and-paper tests. But, remember the advantages
they offer. Besides the content, you can also test reading, comprehension, and
the ability to follow directions. About 30 percent of our firefighters have a
reading problem of one type or another, which should be of concern to you as a
trainer.
There is no such occurrence as “trained.” Training is a life-spanning activity; it is never
finished. The lessons learned that result from firefighters not doing as they were trained
to do or not keeping up have been frequent in our history. Technical training is not all
that is needed. The challenge is to establish a monitoring, tracking, and validation
system that is manageable and doesn’t bury the instructors under printouts.
•••
The overall objective of a training program should be to deliver to the
emergency scene firefighters trained and competent in the skills necessary to
carry out the job and who have the knowledge to evaluate and make decisions
on the appropriate way to perform those skills. Training should not be about
meeting quotas, nor should it be about time spent in training; it should be based
on the outcomes desired.
JOHN M. BUCKMAN III is chief of the German Township (IN) Volunteer Fire
Department in Evansville, Indiana, where he has served for 28 years, and a
past president of the International Association of Fire Chiefs (IAFC). He was
instrumental in forming the IAFC’s Volunteer Chief Officers Section and is past
chairman. He is secretary-treasurer of the National Fire Academy Alumni
Association, is an advisory board member of Fire Engineering, and lectures
extensively on fire service-related topics.
PERFORMANCE EVALUATION
The instructor shall describe the scenario below to the firefighter as
outlined:
You are on the scene of a working structure fire and command calls you
to start interior overhaul with the chainsaw:
1. Locate chainsaw on apparatus.
2. Remove from apparatus.
3. Start and warm up chainsaw.
a. Throttle must be engaged at full throttle for 30 seconds.
b. Remind students that the saw must be at full throttle before beginning
the cut.
c. If the motor bogs down, you must slow your cutting speed.
4. Simulate cut by verbally describing what to do.
5. Demonstrate how to adjust slack out of the chain.
a. Demonstrate how to determine if chain is too tight.
6. Return to service.
a. Clean.
b. Refuel (the instructor shall ask what type of fuel is used).
c. Check the blade/chain used for wear.
7. Change the chain.
a. Student shall describe the implementation method to have the chain
replaced with a new one or have it sharpened.
8. Demonstrate how to determine if chain is dull.
a. Student shall describe the implementation method to have the chain
sharpened.
9. Describe how to complete maintenance work order if saw should be out
of service.
If the student is unable to complete the scenario, the instructor shall
demonstrate the correct method for the student and then the student shall
perform the scenario again correctly.