Cave Training and Etiquette Real or Imaginary?

[cerich]

If agencies are getting what prove to be unfounded allegations of violations of standards the member who reports such allegations should be automatically subjected to an ethics investigation and if it is indeed proven that the report was spurious, vindictive or in short a lie, the reporting person should lose their membership.

 

[LiteHedded]

This isn't rocket surgery. Go to ginnie or peacock until you see a godawful class (shouldn't take long) and pull the instructor aside and handle it

we're acting like it's the Loch Ness monster and can't be proven. This is happening ALL THE TIME

 

[ucfdiver]

This isn't rocket surgery. Go to ginnie or peacock until you see a godawful class (shouldn't take long) and pull the instructor aside and handle it

we're acting like it's the Loch Ness monster and can't be proven. This is happening ALL THE TIME

You're forgetting Brian, that the standards are so vague no one knows where the line is. Is 5% out of trim ok? Is 15%? 20%? 50%? Who knows.

 

[victorzamora]

Vague and unpublished.

 

[karstdvr]

This isn't rocket surgery. Go to ginnie or peacock until you see a godawful class (shouldn't take long) and pull the instructor aside and handle it

we're acting like it's the Loch Ness monster and can't be proven. This is happening ALL THE TIME

That is where you a wrong Brian, the Lochness monster does live in the SantaFe, and has been seen around Turkey Roost at Ginnie, all the other things are fictional

 

[LiteHedded]

Vague and unpublished.

he published them earlier in this thread i believe

 

[Omisson]

You're forgetting Brian, that the standards are so vague no one knows where the line is. Is 5% out of trim ok? Is 15%? 20%? 50%? Who knows.

Here's a fundamental problem with people having the "standards" versus knowing the skill requirements.

An instructor is supposed to exercise "judgment and discretion" to ensure the standards are met. Your "mastery" of a skill is not always objectively obvious.

It's evaluated by an instructor who is supposed to know how to and be able to reasonably gauge your competency - because of his evaluation experience... And as it is applied to your performance that is a judgment call. No standard can accurately define something like that.

It's the same problem we have in the law today - everyone wants to increase the number of laws, the complexity of them to cover every contingency.... Yet All we have done is made a mess by doing that. Similarly in judging an athlete's performance three judges could give 3 different scores in 5 different evaluating criteria- all 3 judges are experts and all 3 see the skill set of the performer differently.... It's not ever possible for it to be wholly objective in evaluating human performance.

---------- Post added March 20th, 2015 at 12:01 PM ----------

Vague and unpublished.

Vague is not a term I'd use to describe the standards of the NSS or NACD - I haven't looked at any other agency standards though for cave.

But standards can't define a perception of mastery - there is no magic formula- it's up to the instructor to be the gatekeeper of reasonableness.

Maybe they are failing in some places but there is no written clarification that could be a substitution that would work any better if the instructor pool is flawed to begin with.

The question is fundamentally an instructor trainer failure, and seeing what agencies have the most number of "problematic" instructors is a good place to begin a discussion. There really aren't that many full cave instructors around.

 

[GDI]

Vague and unpublished.

See post #164 of this thread

 

[lv2dive]

It's my understanding that if there is an issue with a class, the student is asked for permission to share specifics from the feedback with the instructor. If permission is not granted, then it is unlikely that feedback is going to do much of anything other than to provide a basis to support a pattern.

GUE's QA is done on line. The computer system looks for the QA to be completed before it will allow the office to issue the card. My understanding is that all the QA is reviewed by Panos himself -- I do know the instructors do NOT get to see the QA forms their students submit, although they get a summary of their scores on a periodic basis, as well as how they compare to the other people teaching the same class....

 

[victorzamora]

See post #164 of this thread

Those were made available there, yes. However, I was making a general statement regarding cave training agencies.