How many dives to be a PADI scuba instructor?

[Omisson]

It's a combination of teaching skills/personality, experiences, environments, comfort and skills... AND number of dives.

Pull out one component it makes it harder to be competent.

 

[DownbelowDiver]

So, I had lunch a few weeks ago with some new friends who had gone to Thailand to become dive instructors. They both had less than 200 dives, did all of their dives in a summer to become instructors and had never really dove anywhere but Thailand. They had only used dive shop equipment and owned nothing of their own. So, yeah...from certified to instructor with less than 200 dives in a summer so sum up.

I had to wonder what kind of instructors they could possibly be with such limited experience with diving in general and conditions outside of Thailand?

Would you send someone to an instructor with such little experience? Are the prerequisites for instructor not enough?

Thoughts?

Hey dallaskincaid

Your point is completely valid, because it is a perspective of many diving clients - something dive instructors have to be aware of!

All dive instructors will experience challenges more often in the beginning of their instructional career, and getting back into dive instructor duties after a hiatus. But with time and practise, just as with any new skill learnt, instructional methods will be fine-tuned with improvement. If you want to improve and you don't give up, it's just not possible that you get worse!
The more dives someone has logged merely indicates how much practise a diver has had fine-tuning their OWN dive skills. I would say about 150 of my logged dives were a fun dive situation - not supervising others as a dive leader. But the more dive experience a candidate for the IDC would have prior to starting their professional dive training would benefit them, of course. Even if the number of logged dives to enrol on the IE required more than the minimum 100 set by PADI Standards, teaching others diving is a learning curve that will only improve over time and with real scuba diving experience - so, actually acting as an Instructor!

The PADI Master Scuba Diver Trainer course is to assist newly qualified Instructors to gain confidence as a dive leader.
Resident Platinum PADI Course Director Richard Swann of Downbelow's premier PADI 5 Star IDC Dive Centre conducts the MSDT course in a 1-month Go PRO internship program. Included are the 5 PADI Specialties of choice - the participant level is free of charge for any candidate who hasn't completed the PADI Specialty previous to the Instructor-level.
Being a prudent instructor depends on that instructors' attitude, and our island staff team of PADI professionals will ensure the conduct of your dive courses are to the high standard of diver safety we meet. Within the month of professional dive training, Instructor candidates will complete the dive training, and where possible our Go PRO team will assign real student diver clients visiting our beach house in TAR marine park. To achieve the MSDT rating, candidates need to certify 25 student divers, but a Go PRO internship program can easily be extended for another month to continue teaching until the total of 25 have been qualified.

 

[Redshift]

I think the answer is "it depends".
The OP did not only mention number of dives, but also how the instructors had learned and their experience.
An instructor needs to be first a good diver, then good at teaching and have had enough contact with different people in an independent manner and where they were responsible for the dives. Preferably they should also have experience in diving different places, as they will teach students who may go diving somewhere else or, worse, they could go off to teach somewhere else.
200 dives may be short for gaining all those skills (diving, guiding, teaching, experiencing different situations, etc), but there is no guarantee that 500 were enough.

 

[FinnMom]

You should think about the situation here though, and also about how common it is.

100 dives in exactly your intended working environment is a bit different that 100 dives in general, esp. if some 70 or more were done with your employer's boat specifically with the intention of training you to be a divemaster and instructor for them. For these young instructors it's not about knowing how to teach as it might be good to teach (skills midwater, demanding proper trim, etc.) but about knowing how to do things the way your boss wants them done (keep the tourists safe but progressing through the required skills on schedule as well as possible, knees are firmly in the sand for skills, teach the tourists what they need to know, KIS and keep them happy). In this environment after 100 dives the instructor trainee has very likely come to know their dives sites like his own front yard and/or learned a smattering of foreign language phrases, maybe even how what it usually requires to coax the boss's compressor back to life, handle/secure the zodiac, etc. These skills are vastly more useful to his employer than a more varied or lengthly dive experience.

 

[WhiteSands]

Great idea. If only there was some sort of step that preceded being an instructor... where a divers knowledge and skill were evaluated. If only there was something like that.

And that has worked really well. Hence the need for this thread.

 

[RJP]

It's a combination of teaching skills/personality, experiences, environments, comfort and skills... AND number of dives.

Pull out one component it makes it harder to be competent.

At the risk of sounding semantic, I think having a lower dive count simply makes it statistically somewhat less likely that a person you are looking at is a competent instructor. It doesn't necessarily make it harder for that person to be competent.

There's certainly a correlation between the two, but the requirements to become an instructor aren't any more stringent for candidates with a lower dive count. You don't need to score higher on the exams. Neither does a person with a high dive count get a pass on any requirements. This is why, although there's a fair correlation, there are outliers at both ends of the spectrum. One person with 200 dives might have an easy time becoming a fantastic instructor, while another with 1,000 dives might struggle to even become a crappy one.

This also goes to the heart of the discussion about performance requirements. If a person meets the performance requirements they are, by definition, competent. However, if the performance requirements are not evenly applied... perhaps a zero-to-hero instructor mill is turning out sub-par candidates an an IE is letting them through... there's going to be a problem. But that same problem exists if there's a shop turning out sub-par candidates with ten years experience.

If an instructor with 200 dives is not competent... it's only because someone LET THEM become an instructor.

 

[Hawkwood]

Just to keep this on an even keel, many of the other Agencies have the same requirement as to number of dives.

Have a look at their websites, you might actually be surprised, especially when you see some of the much hailed Agencies having exactly the same number.

 

[Jim Lapenta]

True on the numbers. But you also need to consider the methods for creating an instructor. My first instructor cert was through the YMCA. The instructor development part was 6 months long. After crossing over from padi dm to YMCA dm and naui it was expected that you developed as an instructor by actually teaching. The first assignment as a YMCA / NAUI dm was to prepare a one hour lecture on the history of diving, present to the instructor, then to an actual class. Then conduct the first pool session of swimming, snorkeling, and skin diving. We progressed throughout the rest of the course in that manner while attending our own dm training classes. Skills development to demo quality, dive theory, etc. Teaching techniques were developed by teaching actual classes. By the time the instructor exam came we (3) DMC's had already taught and assisted in team teaching over 3 dozen students from Jr ow through rescue and other specialties. The exam was 4 days. Some of those were 12 hour days. What I got out of doing it that was that our own skills development was as much a part of the course as the academics and teaching techniques. Since we also wrote our own lectures and conducted our own pool sessions we were also allowed and encouraged to develop our own styles. We introduced skills in the order we felt best suited students. It allowed for more freedom to recognize student needs. And the focus was not on selling. It was on creating divers. Skilled, competent, safe divers.

 

[Hawkwood]

I did my IDC was over 6 months. My DM was almost a year. Assisted with dozens of classes in each and with many different Instructors and saw many different instructional techniques.

That experience is not unique.

 

[RJP]

I did my IDC was over 6 months. My DM was almost a year. Assisted with dozens of classes in each and with many different Instructors and saw many different instructional techniques.

That experience is not unique.

I spent a year doing my DM program and then DM'd for five years with more than a half-dozen instructors for numerous OW, AOW, Rescue, DM, various specialty classes, and conducted more DSDs, Scuba Reviews, Snorkeling, Skin Diver, Discover Local Diving, and EFR programs than I can count. Never did an actual tally, but probably >300 students/divers.

True on the numbers.

For which there appears to be consensus among various agencies when it comes to min number of dives to become an instructor.
PADI: 100
SSI: 100
SDI: 100
SEI: 100
NAUI: 50 to enroll in ITC, can’t find min to complete

With 200 dives, it looks like the OPs two friends could potentially have 100% more actual diving experience than an instructor from any other agency.