Divemaster & Instructor Qualifications: Your Opinion

[Divedoggie]

I am going to throw something else out here in the discussion about "Standards".

Take this for what it is worth. This is what I learned regarding "Standards" and "Objectives" or "Performance Requirements" as I completed the PADI IDC and IE.

The Standards refer to topics such as maximum teaching ratios, definitions, minimum age requirements, prerequisites for courses, paperwork, the learning environment, instructor and assistant qualifications, certification requirements, etc.

The Standards do not spell out to instructors how they must teach a topic or demonstrate a skill. The Standards provide the framework only.

Then there are the Performance Requirements or Objectives. These are what is required of the student to have learned or "mastered" before moving on. For example, "Respond to air depletion by signalling out-of-air, then securing and breathing from an alternate air source supplied by a buddy for at least one minute while swimming underwater". How one demonstrates or has the students perform it is up to the instructor provided the student is able to perform exactly as it is written. Standards do not dictate to the instructor how to teach this "skill". There are guidelines, but again those do not dictate to the instructor how to teach that "skill" or the topic.

One cannot violate "Standards" in leading students through "Performance Requirements". However, the instructor does have latitude on how to teach a topic or skill.

Well said and if we wanted to be perfectly accurate we would be discussing whether or not its ok to exceed Performance Requirements.

Since this is in 'Basic Scuba Discussions' and not 'Instructor to Instructor', most readers aren't going to have an Instructor's manual handy, so here is a little example:

COURSE STANDARDS
Certification Requirements
• Complete five knowledge development segments,
including quizzes and final exam.
• Complete Confined Water Dives 1-5.
• Meet watermanship requirements.
• Complete Open Water Dives 1-4.

Just to get back to why its a conversation about standards, lets say an Instructor is conducting CW dives 1-5 and doesn't meet the performance requirements or proper sequencing, then the Instructor is not "completing" a CW module, thus not meeting minimum standards.

/

 

[Divedoggie]

That's great! I agree that instructors SHOULD be able to.

Instructors ARE able to.

Our instructors stuck strictly to the course material, because they'd been told that they had to, in order to be compliant with PADI. They took us diving after our class was over, to give us more personally-designed training and skill development. So we ended up getting what we needed in the end, and they felt that they'd complied with PADI's expectations of them as instructors of PADI courses.

Some dive centers can have their own rules that they apply to the courses being taught. Some require Insructors to use only gear that is sold at that shop, some want the class to be taught in a minimum amount of time because they have the pool booked for another group, so they may tell the Instructors to not exceed PADI minimum standards. As a result, the Instructors may then believe they aren't allowed to exceed standards.
PADI's expectations of instructors is that they are current with their membership and insurance, use the PADI materials and framework, complete all paperwork, adhere to ratios, depths, and diver prerequisites.
Instructors are encouraged to make diving fun and to add their experience to enhance the course.

 

[palmm]

just remember that we all vote to keep them working with our wallets. so if you feel that the instructor and/or dm is not experienced enough or lacking critical knowledge go somewhere else. while i believe that certain people pick up things quicker than others, i also believe that the current standard of qualifying dives is to low. i also believe that the average diver does not put enough effort into understanding the affects of depth and differing beliefs on dive profiles, which is entirely up to the diver after the course to self educate themselves.

 

[ZenDiver.3D]

The job is "instructor" it is not "commercial diver."

The key requirement is not their own personal skill, or even their own experience level. The key requirement is the ability to instruct.

Not true at all. If you cannot show excellence in your personal dive skills and ability, you have No business teaching others. Your experience level is also vital to your abilities to handle yourself and students in the water.
One can teach a skill in pool water, but one must be able to show it over and over perfectly, to their classes. In the sea, we better be great divers, because we take our students' lives in our hands with those dives. We taught them the skills and reactions needed to safely dive. We are escorting them in the water for the first time. We are responsible for their knowledge and safety. Students and other non-teaching divers have no idea how much responsibility that is. I am the one who has to make sure that my training is proper, complete, and right, or I am risking their lives. Let's not even think I am being overly dramatic. This is the simple fact. I take it seriously and so should all instructors.

Can someone, ANYONE present any actual evidence that there is something inherently unsound about being taught to dive by someone with only 150 or so dives? So 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.

We like to dive because it's FUN. If an instructor can get the message across whilst ensuring I have fun then he / she is a good instructor.

According the DAN stats, the two groups most at risk whilst diving are: a) those undertaking inherently dangerous things such as cave diving; or b) fat Americans in their 50s and 60s who have been diving all their lives and think this makes them 'safe' divers but whose hearts give out after one too many cheese burgers. So lay off those of us who are happy with our PADI training, and are also happy with the fact that we are safer & more comfortable in the water than all of these self-proclaimed legends of the sport (you know who you are). 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.

Rant over, thanks for listening.

If those dives are varied and in every type of condition, then it would be fine with me. But most people tend to be sendentary and stay in one place or do just one type of diving.
Your stats are nice and yes, cavers are at most risk, but they are also the most and best trained. That changes things.
And I think you relating skiing to diving is an apple to orange comparison. It doesn't work.
And I do Not ever want to taught by the mediocre. Why would anyone want that?

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.

Absolutely!

A leader is calm under fire. If you have led in other adventure recreations and/or sports, that experience crosses over. Even is no one follows your lead, life on the edge is often responsible for extreme calmness under fire. But even if we can handle stressful situations I do not think most instructors can relate to the "average" new dive student.

I'd bet that Walter is one of only a small percentage of Instructors who were not decent swimmers and water comfy before starting diving. What I see in terms of general new scuba students are mostly weak swimming and water wary. I can empathize, encourage and educate but I doubt I can really relate.

I agree with your first paragraph. I don't know about the second. I have aways been a water-baby, but I had real fears about mask clearing. I mean big ones. It took me several years to really clear them up. I teach mask skills fantastically because I absolutely get it. I know all issues there. Many instructors can, (all should), be able to read their student. That is a key part of being a great instructor.

 

[Dhinton0002]

I am on board with most of the responses posted on this thread but think alot of this stems from society's "fast food", "Your way-right away" instant gratification mentality. I mean Im sure with enough ink on a check I could become a liscensed pilot via the internet in just a few short weeks. What seems to be lacking is a true dedication to your craft. I work as a divemaster and it's a standing rule at our shop that you have to activly work as a Diveaster for AT LEAST a year before you can consider heading off to an IDC. (If you wanna keep your job anyways) Point is, there will always be those who would rather have a hundred different cert cards than the experience they SHOULD represent. Eight 20 minute 20 foot dives gets you nothing except a couple of empty tanks and the same amount of experience you would have gained playing "Endless Ocean" on WII in your livingroom. If the number in your log book is THAT important just make one up to impress your friends, stay home and save the viz for those of us who truly wanna be there, right there, under water, right then, doing what we love and not just eeking out a few more minutes to put some tally mark in our book. I honestly can say that there is not one single dive that I haven't learned something. Sometimes it's something as small as "wish I had brought a slate with me" and sometimes it's HUGE (Ill spare you the litany of embarrassing mistakes I have personally made) Just think that a diving career should be viewed as just that........A lifetime of learning!

 

[palmm]

we can go on all day about what it takes to be a good instructor. what about all the experienced divers that have the knowledge and experience to teach and/or dm. they are letting all the inexperienced and those that are not capable of doing there jobs into those positions. it is everyones responsibility to keep a standard within a community.

 

[RJP]

we can go on all day about what it takes to be a good instructor. what about all the experienced divers that have the knowledge and experience to teach and/or dm. they are letting all the inexperienced and those that are not capable of doing there jobs into those positions. it is everyones responsibility to keep a standard within a community.

Any diver that is a good role model - even if not a professional - is helping to do just what you're asking.

 

[Walter]

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.

So what new skills did you learn in the DM class?

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.

That depends on the agency. Some do allow us to add requirements.

 

[sabbath999]

According the DAN stats, the two groups most at risk whilst diving are: a) those undertaking inherently dangerous things such as cave diving...

I am engineering a hijack of my own thread

I am not disagreeing with what you are saying, I just want to add a bit of clarification since this is in the "basic scuba" section and I want to make it clear to people who do not know that "cave diving", while obviously more risky than open water, gets it's bad reputation not from trained cave divers who die but rather from people who do not have the training or equipment to be there...

I wish DAN would rewrite their information about cave diving to make it clear that being an open water divers in a cave without proper training or equipment is EXCEEDINGLY risky, whereas diving with the proper training an equipment is only a slightly elevated risk.

Here are a few facts, accodring to International Underwater Cave Rescue and Recovery, an orginzation of trained cave divers that rescues and recovers bodies of divers in overhead environments.

As of 1999, there were 478 cases of people dying in caves in their database, which dates back to 1950. Of those, only 47 were cave certified, about 10 percent.

In 256 of the deaths, no line was used. 36% of those that died did not even have a single light, and 49 percent had only one light, 9 percent only had two lights. When cave diving, a trained diver carries three or more lights, and only 5 percent of those that died carried three or more (as a trained cave diver would do)...

Here's a link to their data:

http://www.iucrr.org/fatalities.pdf

What makes cave diving inherently more dangerous is when people who are not trained or equipped for cave environments dive in them anyway.

Unfortunately, many of the accidents that trained cave divers have had were situations where the person chose to ignore best practices procedures. Even the guy who wrote the book on cave diving, literally, Sheck Exley, died in a cave doing something that broke one of his own rules (he exceeded the depth limit of his gas system... in this case, the gas system in question wasn't what was on his back, but his body).

Yes, there is elevated risk to even the most trained cave divers, but these people also tend to be the best divers we have when it comes to risk management.

End of hijack.

 

[weidelk]

OK, distinction between certified and non-certified cave divers dying noted. My original point still stands however - the diving environment and the fitness of the individual are the two key risk factors when assessing the likelihood something bad will whilst diving. The number of dives the instructor had before certifying is, I would respectfully suggest, completely and utterly irrelevant except in the minds of those who wish to elevate the importance of what they do beyond any reasonable levels. For a reasonably fit individual who's comfortable in the water I think you could safely teach them to dive recreationally in 2 days, with time left over for end of course beers.

However I understand this will be difficult to accept for those whose self-esteem is inextricably (and inexplicably) tied to the fact that they can hover in the water without sculling or using their fins.