How Rigorous Should Training Be?

[boulderjohn]

I thought the basketball coach analogy was a bit retarted... Cave diving isn't a spectator sport where you can armchair coach people after seeing it live, seeing it from several different angles, zoomed in, slo-mo, etc.

The word is "retarded," generally used to identify people with significant identified learning disabilities. It is usually considered to be an impolite term to use in polite conversation, akin to a racial slur.

It doesn't matter whether it is basketball, dancing, drawing, chess, or anything else that can be taught. The concept is that it is very possible for someone with good skills and great coaching/teaching ability to do a better job teaching those skills than someone who has excellent skills but a lesser ability to teach them.

Interestingly enough, you will find people in education who disagree. As a part of a study I conducted for one of the nation's largest school districts, we surveyed the opinions of teachers who had had extremely different student performances after a common assessment. Of the teachers whose students had universally failed the assessment, 100% said emphatically that teacher instructional skill had nothing to do with student achievement. In contrast, 100% of the teachers whose students had universally passed the assessment with high scores said that teacher instructional decisions were the primary factor in student success. These were all heterogeneous classes--all teachers in the study had students of random ability.

 

[PfcAJ]

John, that's a real common attribution error, and is nothing new. Its not limited to education, at all.

 

[boulderjohn]

Personal experience is important, but it's less important than what you teach, how you teach it, and how well you teach it ...

Personal experience isn't important??

I didn't twist anything, ...

Just wanted to make sure we are talking about the same thing. You think your reply (2nd quote) says exactly the same thing as what he said. Is that correct?

 

[MXGratefulDiver]

Personal experience isn't important?? If that's the case then anyone on the net could teach this stuff. Without the experience one would only know how to save themself by a book, not learn what went wrong and how they fixed the issue. That might work where you dive where you have direct path to the surface but I don't know any cave diver who thinks personal experience isn't necessary.

You ignored the first four words of my sentence. Here ... let me say it again, this time highlighting those words.

Personal experience is important, but it's less important than what you teach, how you teach it, and how well you teach it ...

You know, Kevin ... any fool can make an argument out of anything by simply ignoring the parts that don't fit their argument. Please try not to do that.

I know divers with thousands of dives ... some of them very big dives ... that I would never take a class from, for one or more of the following reasons ...

- their diving skills are inadequate for the dives they've been doing
- their attitude sucks
- their diving style isn't compatible with where I want my diving to go
- their teaching style isn't compatible with my learning style
- they may be great divers, but they lack the skills or patience to pass on what they know to others

There are tons of reasons why someone may not make a good teacher, regardless of their experience level. Choosing an instructor based solely on the dives they've done is a crap shoot ... and not at all a good way to choose an instructor.

And FWIW - it matters not whether we're talking about OW or cave ... and an overhead is an overhead, whether it's in a cave, a wreck, or because you just went to 300 feet, so don't go getting all superior because you happen to live near caves. I'd just love to see how well some of you Florida boys would manage a dive in some of the conditions we deal with up here ...

... Bob (Grateful Diver)

 

[MXGratefulDiver]

It doesn't matter whether it is basketball, dancing, drawing, chess, or anything else that can be taught. The concept is that it is very possible for someone with good skills and great coaching/teaching ability to do a better job teaching those skills than someone who has excellent skills but a lesser ability to teach them.

Red Auerbach was a very good college player, but he never played at the NBA level ... and yet he coached more NBA championship teams than any coach in history. He literally invented the fast break, and developed the talent of more Hall of Fame players than anyone else in the history of the game.

... Bob (Grateful Diver)

 

[boulderjohn]

I find this discussion curious because of my position as an editor and columnist for the Educational Technology and Change Journal, which features educational leaders and theorists from around the world. The point that Bob made and I supported would never be mentioned by anyone in that journal because to professional educators is is so patently obvious there would be no point in mentioning it.

Such a statement would be met with a resounding "Duh!" there. In this thread it is called "absurd" and "retarted."

 

[TSandM]

Well, John, although in general I agree with you, I also think you're being a little overreactive.

If you can't teach, you can't convey anything you know to someone else. People with no patience, or no communication skills, are poor teachers, no matter how good they may be at something. (Often, that "good" is due in part to talent, so such folks sometimes don't even understand the learning process for someone with lesser gifts.)

But if you don't know anything, you aren't worth a great deal as a teacher. Rumor has it that a local instructor is now a DSAT Tech instructor, with about a quarter the dives I have, far fewer local sites, a handful of minor technical dives (and none of them on the signature Puget Sound sites) and no instruction from what anyone would consider a "world class" teacher. Even if this person was absolutely gifted as an instructor, the level to which they could teach with real competence and value is pretty low. GUE requires, for example, that their instructors be certified (and actively diving, because one can't maintain the cert without the dives) a full level above anywhere they are teaching. This instructor, doing relatively simple beginning technical dives, really should be teaching advanced recreational students, and not tech.

Teaching skills are critical to being an effective instructor, but if you have no database of information or experience, all the best teaching skills in the world can do is pass on much of nothing.

 

[MXGratefulDiver]

Well, John, although in general I agree with you, I also think you're being a little overreactive.

If you can't teach, you can't convey anything you know to someone else. People with no patience, or no communication skills, are poor teachers, no matter how good they may be at something. (Often, that "good" is due in part to talent, so such folks sometimes don't even understand the learning process for someone with lesser gifts.)

But if you don't know anything, you aren't worth a great deal as a teacher. Rumor has it that a local instructor is now a DSAT Tech instructor, with about a quarter the dives I have, far fewer local sites, a handful of minor technical dives (and none of them on the signature Puget Sound sites) and no instruction from what anyone would consider a "world class" teacher. Even if this person was absolutely gifted as an instructor, the level to which they could teach with real competence and value is pretty low. GUE requires, for example, that their instructors be certified (and actively diving, because one can't maintain the cert without the dives) a full level above anywhere they are teaching. This instructor, doing relatively simple beginning technical dives, really should be teaching advanced recreational students, and not tech.

Teaching skills are critical to being an effective instructor, but if you have no database of information or experience, all the best teaching skills in the world can do is pass on much of nothing.

... which is why I said "Personal experience is important" ... but what you describe is endemic of modern diving instruction at all levels, including cave diving. Certainly these people should not be teaching at that level ... but their willingness to do it anyway suggest to me that they'd be poor instructors regardless of their diving experience.

I find the attempts to twist my words around to suggest that I believe experience is not important to be pretty ridiculous, since it is not *at all* what I said. I happen to know, Lynne, that you have made some poor choices in instructors ... despite their exemplary records of diving experience or their reputations as outstanding teachers ... they simply weren't right for you. Consider why those were not the best choices you could have made, and then perhaps the meaning of my message will become more clear ...

... Bob (Grateful Diver)

 

[TSandM]

Although, Bob, to realize one shouldn't be teaching at a given level, one has to know how much more there is to know . . . I think a lot of these instructors believe, and have been given to believe, that they have reached the top of their mountain.

 

[MXGratefulDiver]

Although, Bob, to realize one shouldn't be teaching at a given level, one has to know how much more there is to know . . . I think a lot of these instructors believe, and have been given to believe, that they have reached the top of their mountain.

... which is why they'll be poor instructors no matter how much diving they do. The truly great divers understand that there is no pinnacle ... just a continuous upward slope. Think about the people in your diving world who you admire the most and what they have in common ... among them is an insatiable hunger for continous improvement.

People who feel they've learned it all are not people I want to take a class from ... regardless of what they've accomplished up to that point. They would fit into my "attitude sucks" category ...

... Bob (Grateful Diver)