Dumbing down of scuba certification courses (PADI) - what have we missed?

[Thalassamania]

The phrase is not derisive of the educator; there is nothing wrong with being a sage. It is derisive of a specific methodology that the sage would use when there are better choices available. There are times when being the sage on the stage is useful, but it is generally the least effective of a wide range of instructional tools available.

Unfortunately, many, perhaps most, educators know that tool only, and they therefore look with suspicion and even sneer at methodologies that do not look familiar to them.

The problem, for me, has nothing to do with the medium per se, it has to do with the inadequate syllabus that the medium has been applied to.

I simply don't see the need for elitism in Scuba.

In everything on earth there is a continuum of quality with inadequate and incompetent at one end of the spectrum and elite at the other. My responsibility, throughout my career, has been to do the absolutely best I possibly can within the confines of a four credit, semester long course. If I'd had more time I could have done even better, if I'd had less, I'd have had to compromise further. What you see as the "elitism" of the training programs of the science diving community is mandated by the administrations of the institutions for whom we (the DSOs) work. The success of these programs was recognized by OSHA as one of the primary reasons for exempting us fromt the commercial diving standards.

You choose to to teach to a level that we reject as inadequate. You are not unique in that. What you do is, giving you the benefit of the doubt, is better than than what most recreational diving instructors do. In that you are right there at the high end of the standard of practice of your community.

I choose to do more. I choose to teach in a situation with a different set of goals than you do. I choose to place myself in a situation where I get to handcraft divers, one at a time, and produce the most knowledgeable and most skilled individuals that I am able to, within the confines or the realities that I must adapt to. I'm sure that you feel that you do the same. The difference lies in the confines that each of us chooses to accept, and the resulting "product."

Is the training that your students receive adequate for them to be able to conduct a dive on their own under conditions that are the same or similar to those they were exposed to during training? Yes ... I suspect that is the case, and if that is what you are trying to do, God bless you, you have succeeded.

That is not my goal or the goal of the community from which I spring, we aspire to something "better," which you ridicule with nonsensical, inapplicable, nonsequitors like "Sage on a Stage" or "SEAL training," epithets that are laughable to any who are even remotely familiar with what we actually do. I suppose this is because you do not understand what we do, or why we do it, but never-the-less it is distressing just the same. We are a small group two standard deviations out to the right, by definition an elite, What is wrong with that? Your comments serve only to misrepresent who we are and misinform those who do not know better.

I make my classes way fun and challenging in their own right. There is no need to make Scuba any more complicated than it already is! Or possibly just give them what they want and need? You and I will just have to agree to agree on this! That's been my point for some time.

Bully for you. Who appointed you the arbiter of what level of complexity is required or appropriate for a community that you've never participated in? What is it that gives you any insight into what the divers I train want? Or what they need? I have a fair amount of experience observing and attempting to help correct the failings of the recreational community, and at times like this I really think that I am must be very stupid to even bother, for as Mathew Henry, the 17th Century non-conformist divine and commentator said, "None so deaf as those that will not hear. None so blind as those that will not see."

 

[boulderjohn]

Rather than limiting the flow of knowledge, Instructors should educate students on how to process the knowledge and critically analyze the information they are receiving so that they can truly becoming thinking, self sufficient, competent divers.

Interesting. That is one of the key criticisms of the sage on the stage approach to education. Lecturing people on "how to process the knowedge and analyze the information they are receiving" is considered to be less effective than having them process knowledge and analyze information.

Several interesting studies have shown that instructors who have a more limited amount of knowledge about their subject matter are much more likely to rely on lectures for their instructional approach than are instructors who have a very deep knowledge of their content. No one is really sure why.

One theory is that instructors with a limited depth of knowledge labor under the delusion that what they are teaching is relatively close to the total set of knowledge availalble, while the more knowledgeable instructor knows how much there really is to know and how little is actually being taught, allowing that instructor to make more judicious decisions about the relative unimportance of certain factoids and understand how much more important the processing and analyzing skills you mention are.

Another (possibly noncompeting) theory is that instructors with limited knowledge are afraid to let students explore issues that go beyond their own understanding. For example, I was once teaching a high school class in which a student's project led her to an argument that a certain thinker was an epistemological negativist. She asked me about it, and I was able to explain it to her to the extent that she needed to understand it for her project. It happened that I knew the term--it is a philosophical term rarely used in my content area--but if I didn't, I could have guided her to what she needed to know. Many instructors would be afraid of encountering such a problem and appearing to be unprepared.

 

[The Chairman]

I choose to place myself in a situation where I get to handcraft divers, one at a time,

This is GREAT for your eensy tiny subset of Science Divers who are in reality PROFESSIONAL divers. It's just not needed for the rank and file enthusiast who want to dabble in the sport!

I can train first aid/cpr on many levels depending on what you need to do.

Baby Sitters
Basic
Professional
Wilderness Survival

Each of these classes has their own agenda, their own curricula, their own standards and their own time frame. Will the baby sitters benefit from the Professional class? Sure they could... but more than likely they would be overwhelmed by the intensity and the rigor of the scenarios. Why cut them OUT of learning the basics by mandating that they HAVE to learn how the pros do it?

Pardon me, but I am going to keep the FUN in the FUNdamentals of diving!

If I wanted to teach PROFESSIONAL diving, I would go join an academy. Not that they would let me in. I simply have toooooo much fun!

 

[Walter]

This led teachers for 30 years to conclude that the only way to have some students meet academic standards was to lower the standards to meet the level of th students. Research over the past few decades has shown the opposite, that proper application of effective methodologies can make any student succeed at a high level.

Well somebody should explain this to most of the agencies. It's time to raise standards back to where they were in the 70s. Of course, those of us who've continued to teach at the higher level have known all along that people can meet and exceed those higher standards, there's nothing about higher standards that is "elitism."

Anecdotal teaching is GREAT in almost any non-traditional class.

It's "GREAT," but you ridicule it as sage on a stage and a waste of time. Which do you really believe?

 

[The Chairman]

Bully for you. Who appointed you the arbiter of what level of complexity is required

NAUI, SDI and TDI. I don't know that they appointed me though. Rather, I earned the right to set that level for my students through them. You don't get to set that level for my students. I checked with them, and they are way OK with this. BTW, I won't be setting that level for YOUR students either.

 

[Blackwood]

I'm always amazed by SCUBA and guitar playing, the only two activities I can readily think of where mediocrity is praised and excellence is ridiculed as fringe.

 

[The Chairman]

It's "GREAT," but you ridicule it as sage on a stage and a waste of time. Which do you really believe?

I believe that you should learn the difference between traditional or formal and nontraditional or informal.

 

[Walter]

I know the difference, but a particular technique is either great or it's not great. I understand that techniques can be applied effectively or poorly. Applied poorly, no technique is ideal. Assuming effective application, why is anecdotal teaching never appropriate for formal classes?

 

[boulderjohn]

Last night we had an instructor meeting at the LDS for whom I work as a part time contract instructor. One of the topics was eLearning, which the shop only starting using in the last 6 months. The instructors who were assigned to these students were the regular store employees, so neither I nor the other contact instructors I have had any direct experience (yet). The instructors who taught them said that without a single exception, every one of them had the academic content nailed, and they were all fully prepared for the pool portion of the class.

 

[The Chairman]

I know the difference, but a particular technique is either great or it's not great.

I have YET to see you do a Giant Stride while doing a shore dive at Venice.

It almost always depends on the circumstances. BTW, if you took the time to comprehend what I actually said, the word "never" was not used in that context by me. As for reasons cited by BoulderJohn about pedagogical research, I LIMIT my usage of anecdotes in my lectures.