Divemaster & Instructor Qualifications: Your Opinion

[Walter]

All I can say is thank goodness you don't run the ski industry, if you did we'd all be forced to sit through 4 weeks of intensive avalanche survial training before you'd let us on the bunny slopes.

I think you are under the mistaken impression that those of us who advocate a more comprehensive approach to dive instruction think it should be mandatory. I don't and I doubt many others do either. I think a comprehensive approach should be available and I recommend it, but I think you should be able to choose any style of instruction (or no instruction at all) that you like.

I'm quite sure that ALL agencies have limits on what an instructor may teach in "X" class

There are probably some things I'm not allowed to teach in an SEI class, but without searching the standards, I couldn't tell you what they might be. We have a great deal of freedom as long as we are exceeding standards. I'll try to remember to see what I can find. I do know the limits within which PADI instructors must teach are vastly different from the limits of many other agencies. I do not believe your comparison is valid because it gives the impression the limits are similar. They are not.

By the way, I can and do teach staged decompression diving in my Open Water class. I am not allowed to have my students actually conduct staged decompression dives, but we can simulate them as long as we stay within the no decompression limits.

 

[RU4SKUBA]

...many people on this board have complete delusions of grandeur about what they do, here's a little secret I'll let you in on - 90% of divers don't give a damn about your 4000 dives or your super-duper customised BPW set up or your endless boring anecdotes about how tough diver training was in your day.

Although phrased in a slightly argumentative manner, I would tend to agree and go so far as to suggest these instructors should stick to advanced programs and stay away from introductory OW diver courses. If their tolerance for newbies or the system is so terribly low, it may be telling you something about the instructor and their mentality.

Last week I taught a 12 year old kid how to do the side stroke, back crawl, and breast stroke in one 25 minute lesson... and he's never had swim lessons before. This is not uncommon in the aquatics environment and we deal with mostly children for a fraction of the face-time.

Someone who can't teach basic diving skills --to an adult with swimming skills-- within the framework of the OW diver system should take an education course or hand it off to a more organized instructor capable of keeping on task and handling newbies.

I've had some good instructors, but none of them had time-management, classroom teaching, or swimming skills which may indicate why they struggled to learn quickly in the water and required six weeks to get certified or 250 dives to learn buoyancy control.

 

[Rhone Man]

If that's your motivation, don't bother. Few DM courses teach skills beyond what you should learn in your entry level class.

Respectfully disagree. I have done the DM course twice, and it is nice to knock the rust off some of the lesser used skills and practice getting them to "demonstration quality". It was nice to go through the diver rescue material again too.

I was talking to an open water scuba instructor a couple of weeks ago, and I was surprised to find that he had only a few more dives than I have (somewhere in the 160 dive area for him). Yeah, I know the lower limit starts at 100 but I just found it hard to believe that somebody would be teaching diving as an "expert" with little more overall diving experience than myself.

Dive counts are misleading. If I meet a British diver who has 160 dives, I would expect them to be an extremely experienced and highly competent diver. On the other hand, someone can rack up 160 not-very-challenging dives in a very short period of time in a resort in Thailand, and learn little. David Shaw became one of the most accomplished divers in the world within 300 dives.

In reality, it doesn't take a lot of diving skill or experience to shepherd someone through the modules of an uneventful OW class. But to be a superb role model for students, and to be on top of your game when something goes wrong -- that takes more, and maybe a lot more.

As ever, Lynne has nailed it.

 

[RJP]

Proficiency is merely one aspect of teach. Experience also teaches divers how different divers approach the same situation. It shows them how things can screw up and how those screw ups can be corrected.

Funny, I was telling a client this early today unrelated to diving:

Seeing something done right a few times doesn't make you an expert. You don't become an expert until you've seen it done WRONG every possible way.

 

[Leejnd]

I only am familiar with the requirements of a few agencies, PADI in particular, and the statement is/maybe misleading. I'm quite sure that ALL agencies have limits on what an instructor may teach in "X" class (no staged decompression in a basic Open Water Class for example). But I'm unaware of being able to "teach above the minimum standards" -- again, in particular for PADI.

At the margins, this can become a very fine line only found, permits, by Jesuits!, but I'm allowed, no encouraged, to expand on topics/skills within the curriculum, but it is true I'm not allowed to introduce "new topics or skills" (or words to that effect) -- unless, of course, it happens to directly pertain to local diving conditions. HOWEVER, if an instructor states she may only teach to the minimum standards, I submit that instructor is not doing her job.

Okay, let me state that I in no way meant to be "misleading" in my statement. Let me clarify that I am NOT an instructor - I'm just a diver. However, what I posted was what I have been told directly by instructors, and have even read numerous times here on Scubaboard. If it's not true, that will be a surprise to me given the amount of attention that one concept has received on Scubaboard alone.

To be clear: what I said is this:

Note that some certifying agencies are pretty rigid about NOT allowing their instructors to teach beyond what's in the course...EXACTLY what's in the course, no more, no less. Instructors don't necessarily have the option of teaching above the minimum standards - they can get in trouble for that.

I don't want to head down the agency-bashing trail, but I was specifically told this about PADI. What I was told is that PADI instructs their instructors not to teach anything beyond exactly what's in the course material...that doing so puts them at legal risk, as they might be teaching something that is not PADI-sanctioned, and not intended to be part of the course.

I acknowledge that this is second-hand (and maybe even third-hand) information, but I've read it and been told it enough times that it seemed quite plausible to me.

Can other PADI instructors share whether or not this is true? If it's not, mea culpa - but I'll be surprised given amount of ink it's received in here, and the number of instructors I've heard this from.

The only reason I mentioned it at all is that the OP said that one of the things he looks for in an instructor is someone who will teach "well above the minimum standards" - and, depending on the agency, from what I've been told, this may not be an option.

 

[merxlin]

I'm not an instructor either but I have heard this as well, but also that teaching beyond standards is OK as long as the pass/fail criteria is not based on the extra instruction. In other words you can teach it, but the student only needs to be proficient in the stated standards to get certified.

 

[sabbath999]

I'm not sure I agree with what I think is the OP's suggestion that someone with 150 dives is definitely not ready to be a DM candidate.

I not sure I agree with a suggestion that someone with 150 dives is definitely not ready to be a DM candidate. But that's not at all what I said. I said that I find it hard to believe that somebody is ready... not that they are definitely not ready.

Big difference between what you think I said and what I actually said.

 

[RJP]

Leej wrote
I only am familiar with the requirements of a few agencies, PADI in particular, and the statement is/maybe misleading. I'm quite sure that ALL agencies have limits on what an instructor may teach in "X" class (no staged decompression in a basic Open Water Class for example). But I'm unaware of being able to "teach above the minimum standards" -- again, in particular for PADI.

At the margins, this can become a very fine line only found, permits, by Jesuits!, but I'm allowed, no encouraged, to expand on topics/skills within the curriculum, but it is true I'm not allowed to introduce "new topics or skills" (or words to that effect) -- unless, of course, it happens to directly pertain to local diving conditions. HOWEVER, if an instructor states she may only teach to the minimum standards, I submit that instructor is not doing her job.

Someone will correct me if I'm wrong, but I was under the impression that within PADI an instructor cannot introduce new topics or skills and then base the student's certification on whether or not they can demonstrate/master them.

I know that sounds like a legal - or even a Jesuit loophole - but I think that as long as additional skills/topics do not violate or run counter to PADI standards that an instructor can add them to what he/she teaches.

 

[RJP]

What I was told is that PADI instructs their instructors not to teach anything beyond exactly what's in the course material...that doing so puts them at legal risk, as they might be teaching something that is not PADI-sanctioned, and not intended to be part of the course.

In the legal liability section of training I was taught that by teaching to the standards you would have the benefit of being able to point to the standards - as such - if you ever end up in court needing to justify why you did what you did. Gives you some coverage in terms of doing what is generally considered reasonable and prudent. If you go beyond the standards you might be out on a limb.

PADI did not then "instruct me" that I must stay within standards. They merely laid out the potential downside to not doing so. I appreciate that they made this point; this way I'll know if/when I'm going out on a limb and can make an informed decision to do so.

 

[Leejnd]

In the legal liability section of training I was taught that by teaching to the standards you would have the benefit of being able to point to the standards - as such - if you ever end up in court needing to justify why you did what you did. Gives you some coverage in terms of doing what is generally considered reasonable and prudent. If you go beyond the standards you might be out on a limb.

PADI did not then "instruct me" that I must stay within standards. They merely laid out the potential downside to not doing so. I appreciate that they made this point; this way I'll know if/when I'm going out on a limb and can make an informed decision to do so.

Thanks for clarifying. I suspect our instructors may have taken this guidance from PADI a little too literally - which actually worked out well for us, as what they did was get us through the class, then go diving with us on a social basis, and teach us stuff they said they couldn't teach in the class. For free.

Still, I did hear this from many other instructors, and recall many similar discussions on SB, so they are clearly not the only ones who interpreted the message from PADI to be "teach only what's in the course".