Cave Training and Etiquette Real or Imaginary?

[Omisson]

Something to think about, what if we had a system like this: An instructor trains the students but someone from the agency evaluates the student's skills and decides if they pass or not. If an instructor gets a lot of failures both the agency and the students would learn very quick that s/he is not a good instructor. This would drive bad instructors out of the industry. The evaluator has no personal ties to the students and no financial interest. The instructor does have a financial interest in training the students well or else they will not come back to him in future. Of course for this to work the evaluator needs to be objective and detached from instructor(s). No good ole boys or fraternities allowed.

If the objective is to train good divers then the financial incentives need to be aligned with that goal.

Outside of Florida there is no way to do this.

For example, in the Metro NYC/Long Island - there are 0 PADI/DSAT Tec ITs (all of New York State also). There is 1 IANTD Tec IT, and 4 TDI ITs but none of them are full Trimix IT rated. There is 1 GUE Instructor.

Do we not permit such training here then? Or fly in ITs from elsewhere? How much do we now have to charge for training to cover this exam cost?

 

[ams511]

Outside of Florida there is no way to do this.

For example, in the Metro NYC/Long Island - there are 0 PADI/DSAT Tec ITs (all of New York State also). There is 1 IANTD Tec IT, and 4 TDI ITs but none of them are full Trimix IT rated. There is 1 GUE Instructor.

Do we not permit such training here then? Or fly in ITs from elsewhere? How much do we now have to charge for training to cover this exam cost?

What if the instructor was allowed to issue a provisional pass say good for 6 months to a year and sometime during that period the diver must check out with someone from the agency. Sort of like in recreational diving where an instructor gives a referral. This should help minimize the additional costs because the person doing the certifications could schedule multiple students at once.

Also if an agency wanted to go this route they would need to have people available.

 

[GDI]

What if the instructor was allowed to issue a provisional pass say good for 6 months to a year and sometime during that period the diver must check out with someone from the agency. Sort of like in recreational diving where an instructor gives a referral. This should help minimize the additional costs because the person doing the certifications could schedule multiple students at once.

Also if an agency wanted to go this route they would need to have people available.

The logistics and administration for such an idea wouldn't be practical

The NACD already has a means were a student can request another assessment from a different instructor
. This occurs if the student disagrees with the first instructors assessment (the student failed usually), the student can request the second opinion and the instructor will ask another instructor to review the student's abilities.

Now the likely hood that the second instructor will side with the student is unheard of - zero zilch, thus ol'boys network mentality

To become a cave instructor one must under go three co-teaches. This concept is to prevent poor instruction and highest quality plus consistency of standards and skill sets. Maybe it is time for a review of this practice?
Following the co-teach two letters of recommendation must be written before a instructor candidate can attend an instructor evaluation (IE)

 

[Jack Hammer]

I think a periodic re-qualification for instructors is not out of line and would be beneficial to the students, the agency, the community and the instructors themselves. This is about cave diving, not resort diving. Cave divers are supposed to be the best of the best.

 

[GDI]

I think a periodic re-qualification for instructors is not out of line and would be beneficial to the students, the agency, the community and the instructors themselves. This is about cave diving, not resort diving. Cave divers are supposed to be the best of the best.

Re-qualification , re-certification under review and consideration. However because of the international displacement of instructors, a QA system must first be worked out. There is more then just Florida, we have Australia, Mexico, Spain, France, Britain, Russia, China to name a few.

Other options are seminars and must attend training review sessions both on-line and physical appearance, Again the international considerations

 

[The Chairman]

Re-certification sounds great as for some, skills are perishable. Unfortunately, they can be a hero for a day while under scrutiny and then be a zero when they are back with their students. They have to have craps to give in order to do a good job and the truly bad instructors just don't give a crap. The lack of reports is what still astonishes me, and it's obvious that it's just too difficult to find the mechanism to do this. All these posters claiming that they've filed them and they just aren't there. That's the real problem to be addressed.

 

[kensuf]

Something to think about, what if we had a system like this: An instructor trains the students but someone from the agency evaluates the student's skills and decides if they pass or not. If an instructor gets a lot of failures both the agency and the students would learn very quick that s/he is not a good instructor. This would drive bad instructors out of the industry. The evaluator has no personal ties to the students and no financial interest. The instructor does have a financial interest in training the students well or else they will not come back to him in future. Of course for this to work the evaluator needs to be objective and detached from instructor(s). No good ole boys or fraternities allowed.

If the objective is to train good divers then the financial incentives need to be aligned with that goal.

The CDAA used to do that. They may still. I like it.

 

[ams511]

The only other way I can think of in combating this problem would be for dive sites to stop accepting the C-cards of agencies or instructors that are known to produce unsafe divers. If no dive site accepts the card then the card is worthless and students would train with a different instructor or agency.

Again, you need to remove the financial incentives for an agency or instructor to certify students that are not ready. Requiring retraining won't do anything.

 

[diversteve]

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A ScubaBoard Staff Message...

A post which was highly offensive and aggressive in nature has been removed. That post sparked responses that went very much off topic from this thread and threatened to derail it completely. For those interested in that subject, a thread has been started in Accidents and Incidents here:

http://www.scubaboard.com/forums/accidents-and-incidents/504093-shannon-lewis-true-story.html

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[GDI]

Summation of things:

Two of the main trends appearing in this thread are the agencies ability to monitor instructor performance (QA) and the common qualification of standards or skills (Core Skills). Repeatedly these points come up. In considering QA procedures, each agency does not have to be the same and nor should they. The process of QA can be dealt with and should be developed by each agency respectively. The NACD will further develop theirs. Most agencies have a means of QA even though it may not be readily available nor understood by the greater diving community. Often these procedures are written into the instructor's manual. These manuals contain the agencies standards and procedures but may fall short on how the actual process of QA is administratively done referring only a general process. It is up to the instructor to explain the process (as best they can) to the student or claimant. If a complaint is made against that instructor or a friend of the instructor, this could be problematic? I see it a failure to file a complaint or file on behalf of someone as a lack of professional ethics be it a friend or not. The QA process really needs to be removed away from this method and made more available to the greater community. As a result of reading this thread, I have developed a NACD Incident Reporting form. It has been submitted to the BoD to review before the 11 Apr meeting to be held at Ginnie Springs. There I will outline the process for how this procedure should be conducted. It will be simple and hopefully intuitive. The BoD will need to vote on it before implementation. As for other QA processes, I have something in mind, actually I have several ideas. So this also is in the works. Everything we have discussed so far has for the most part targeted the instructor and the agency. All this is fair enough because we set the standards and issue the certifications. Part of my greater concept is to have the training agencies come to the table and agree on a core set of skills with acceptable levels. We don't all have to be the same, but we should be together in agreement. There are no secret scuba skills, just secret handshakes. I believe a instructor should pass no faults and demonstrate their expectation setting the standard. First I need the agencies to agree on a core skill set, Secondly the expectation of how each skill should be achieved and performed. A instructor should have some flexibility in assessing a skill but know what is and isn't acceptable, Standards should not be so stringent that the instructor is restricted or limited in working with a student diver but they must clearly explain the acceptable limits and the instructor to hold to those limits.

So I ask myself what are the minimum skills common to all cave training agencies? What are acceptable pass or fail criteria for these skills?