My Proposed EdD Research: Instructor Diagnosis in High-Stress Adult Learning Environments

How do we help people perform when the situation is complex, uncertain, and high-pressure?

That question has followed me through military operations, instructor development, training design, leadership roles, and now into my doctoral work in education.

I am currently pursuing a Doctor of Education, and my proposed applied research project is focused on a challenge I have seen repeatedly across high-consequence learning environments:

Experienced instructors are often expected to diagnose learner performance in real time, but the way they do that work is not always clearly documented, taught, or transferred.

That matters.

Because in performance-based training, the issue is not always whether the learner “knows the material.”

Sometimes the issue is knowledge.

Sometimes it is perception.

Sometimes it is decision-making.

Sometimes it is execution under pressure.

Those are not the same problems, and they should not automatically receive the same instructional response.

The Problem I Am Studying

My proposed research will examine how experienced instructors identify, interpret, and diagnose learner performance in a high-stress adult learning environment.

More specifically, I am interested in how those instructors determine the appropriate instructional intervention after they diagnose a performance issue.

In simple terms:

How do experienced instructors figure out what is actually going wrong, and how do they decide what to do about it?

That may sound straightforward, but in complex learning environments it rarely is.

A learner may fail to execute a task properly, but the visible error is not always the root problem.

The breakdown may have occurred earlier.

Maybe they misunderstood the situation.

Maybe they recognized the cue but selected the wrong response.

Maybe they made the right decision but could not execute it under pressure.

Maybe the issue was confidence, sequencing, attention, communication, or task saturation.

Good instructors often learn to see those differences.

Great instructors often learn to act on them quickly.

The challenge is that much of that expertise can remain tacit. Experienced instructors may know what they are seeing, but the diagnostic process behind their judgment is not always easy to explain, teach, or replicate.

That is the gap I want to better understand.

Why This Matters

In high-stress adult learning environments, training is not just about information transfer.

It is about preparing people to perform.

That performance may happen in military operations, aviation, emergency response, healthcare, law enforcement, or other environments where time, uncertainty, and consequence are part of the job.

In those settings, instructors do more than deliver content. They observe performance, interpret behavior, identify breakdowns, provide feedback, coach decision-making, and decide when and how to intervene.

That is a demanding instructional role.

It also places a significant burden on instructor judgment.

When that judgment is developed mostly through experience, mentorship, and trial and error, it can create inconsistency across an instructor population.

One instructor may see a performance issue as a knowledge gap.

Another may see it as a decision-making problem.

Another may see it as poor execution.

Each may recommend a different intervention.

Sometimes that variation is appropriate. Instructor judgment should not be removed from complex training environments.

But there is a difference between professional judgment and unnecessary inconsistency.

My research is focused on that space.

The Proposed Research Setting

The proposed study is localized to the United States Air Force Weapons School Joint Terminal Attack Controller Weapons Instructor Course, an advanced professional military education environment that uses rigorous, performance-based instruction.

This setting is important because instructors operate within a structured curriculum and established qualification framework. That makes it a useful environment for examining instructor diagnostic practice.

When the curriculum and standards are relatively consistent, differences in instructional practice may reveal how instructors use judgment, experience, and expertise when diagnosing learner performance.

Although the study is focused on one specific setting, the instructional challenge is much broader.

Many organizations need instructors who can prepare professionals to operate under pressure.

Many also struggle with how to transfer expert instructional judgment from experienced instructors to newer instructors.

That is where this work has practical value.

What I Hope to Develop

The anticipated practical outcome of this research is an Instructor Diagnostic and Intervention Toolkit.

The purpose of this toolkit is not to turn instructors into checklist operators.

It is not designed to remove judgment, flatten instructional style, or force every instructor to respond the same way.

Quite the opposite.

The goal is to better understand how experienced instructors diagnose learner performance and translate that expertise into a structured, evidence-informed process that can support instructor development.

A useful toolkit could include:

Observation indicators.

Diagnostic prompts.

Intervention selection guidance.

Debrief considerations.

Instructor development recommendations.

A common language for discussing learner performance breakdowns.

The intent is to help instructors ask better questions about what they are seeing.

Not just:

Did the learner fail?

But:

Where did the performance break down?

Why did it break down?

What type of intervention is most likely to help?

What should the instructor watch for next?

Those questions matter because the right diagnosis should shape the right instructional response.

What This Research Is Not Claiming

At this stage, I want to be clear about what this research is and is not.

I am not claiming that the study has already produced findings.

I am not claiming that I have validated a model.

I am not claiming that there is one universal answer for instructor diagnosis.

This work is still proposed and developing.

The research is focused on exploring how experienced instructors identify, interpret, and diagnose learner performance, and how they determine instructional interventions in a high-stress adult learning environment.

The goal is to learn from experienced instructor practice and use that understanding to support better instructor development.

That distinction matters.

Good applied research should be useful, but it should also be honest about where it is in the process.

Why I Care About This Work

I care about this because training quality matters.

Not training volume.

Not the number of slides.

Not the number of repetitions alone.

Not whether a course checks the required administrative boxes.

I care about whether training helps people perform when performance matters.

That has been a consistent thread in my professional life. I have spent years thinking about how adults learn, how instructors teach, how professionals develop expertise, and how organizations can move beyond knowledge delivery toward performance improvement.

This doctoral work gives me a structured way to study a problem I have seen and cared about for a long time.

Instructors are often the bridge between curriculum and performance.

They are the ones watching the learner struggle in real time.

They are the ones deciding whether to pause, redirect, question, demonstrate, remediate, challenge, or let the scenario continue.

They are the ones helping learners turn experience into judgment.

If we want better performance from learners, we should also pay serious attention to how we develop instructors.

Bringing It Back to Performance

At its core, this research is about improving the way organizations develop instructors who develop performers.

That sentence is important.

Because in complex environments, the instructor’s job is not simply to teach information.

The instructor’s job is to help learners build the capability to apply knowledge, make decisions, adapt, and execute under realistic conditions.

That requires more than content expertise.

It requires diagnostic skill.

It requires judgment.

It requires the ability to see beyond the visible error and identify the actual performance breakdown.

That is the work I am hoping to study more deeply.

And, ideally, it is the work that will help shape a practical toolkit that supports instructors, improves consistency, strengthens feedback, and helps learners perform better when it matters most.

As always, stay humble in your knowledge, approachable in your teaching, credible in your thoughts, and aggressive in your passion to teach others.