Liability of Agencies for their instructors??

[boulderjohn]

Instruction requires skills that go beyond teaching the name of a skill on a checklist. As my instructing skill grew, here were the most valuable improvements I made.

1. My explanations prior to demonstrating the skills improved. You absolutely do not want to be babbling too long--it is counterproductive. You do, however, have to say the right things, and you have to learn what the right things are. For example, my ability to teach mask clearing improved when I switched to neutral buoyancy instruction, with students horizontal. I learned to make the point that the bottom skirt of the mask has to be the lowest point, with the mask perpendicular. I had never heard anyone say that exact phrase before, and it made a world of difference in student performance.
2. In all skills, having seen just about every way a student could screw it up allowed me to make rapid diagnoses of what needed to done. As a new instructor, I sometimes watched intently to see what was wrong; with experience, I could see it and correct it immediately.
3. I learned patience with certain problems. For example, when students are first in the pool, you have them inflate the BCD and swim on the surface. In some cases, students feel like the tank is throwing them around. They keep losing balance. What to do? Don't worry about it. It's a problem that solves itself pretty quickly.
4. With technical diving instruction, I learned that some skills (like valve shutdowns and holding decompression stops) take a long time to master. I learned to just keep giving tips and assuring the students that they were going to get it down, so stop fretting too much. I have confidence in you, now you have confidence in you, too.

 

[boulderjohn]

No need for lots of studies to determine that. That's been rather obvious since I was in 3rd grade.

I spent several years in staff development, trying to teach high quality instructional practices. I regularly had teachers sneer and say that it didn't matter how you teach, learning depended on the student. They used that belief to justify refusing to learn anything new.

I participated in a research study that looked at testing done in a school district at 3rd, 8th, and 10th grade. The teachers knew how their students did, and they knew the total average. What they did not know was that not one teacher had students perform near that average. Some teachers had students who all performed really well, and some teachers had students who all did badly. We then had an anonymous survey of the teachers. We asked them how they felt their students had done, which secretly told us whether the responses were from teachers whose students did really well or really poorly.

We asked about educational philosophy, giving them choices to select the one that most closely matched their beliefs. In 100% of the cases where students did very poorly, the teachers said it did not matter how a teacher taught; learning was solely a function of student ability. In 100% of the cases where the students did well, the teachers said that all student can succeed at a high level, and it was up to the teacher to find the approach needed to bring the student to success.

 

[boulderjohn]

I wanted to add a scuba analogy to my story above about the high number of failures in classes with teachers who believed student success was tied to student ability and not to instructional skill.

About 15 years ago or ScubaBoard got a new member, a DM working as an instructional assistant in a dive shop. He was one of those new-to-it-all people we get on ScubaBoard who somehow had already learned all there was to know. Even though he was not yet an instructor, he was able to give lectures on instructional technique.

He was very much of the it's-all-up-to-the-student school of thought, and evidently that was a common belief in the shop where he worked. He casually talked about the fact that in typical scuba instruction, at least one or two students will quit during the pool sessions, proving that some people were just not cut out for scuba.

He was quite shocked and (at first) defiant when scuba instructors said that, no, in a typical scuba class outside of your shop, one or two students do not quit during the pool sessions. In fact, that is a pretty rare event. He left ScubaBoard soon after that.

 

[Eric Sedletzky]

I wanted to add a scuba analogy to my story above about the high number of failures in classes with teachers who believed student success was tied to student ability and not to instructional skill.

About 15 years ago or ScubaBoard got a new member, a DM working as an instructional assistant in a dive shop. He was one of those new-to-it-all people we get on ScubaBoard who somehow had already learned all there was to know. Even though he was not yet an instructor, he was able to give lectures on instructional technique.

He was very much of the it's-all-up-to-the-student school of thought, and evidently that was a common belief in the shop where he worked. He casually talked about the fact that in typical scuba instruction, at least one or two students will quit during the pool sessions, proving that some people were just not cut out for scuba.

he was quite shocked and (at first) defiant when scuba instructors said that, no, in a typical scuba class outside of your shop, one or two students do not quit during the pool sessions. In fact, that is a pretty rare event. He left ScubaBoard soon after that.

Who was that?

 

[boulderjohn]

Who was that?

Beats me. That was 15 years ago, and he was not around that long.

 

[lowflyer]

Some agencies, PADI included, survey a high percentage of the students when they are done with a course. The survey asks them specific things about the course in an attempt to see that standards in the course were met. If the survey indicates a problem, an investigation begins. When I was still a DM assisting classes, the instructor I was assisting was investigated because a student survey included one student who misremembered the course and said he had not used an ascent line when conducting the CESA.

I

I can see where the survey system works if a student was trained far away from where he lives, such as a vacation resort. But I have had 2 or 3 students who were trained locally tell me they were not going to say anything negatve because they wanted to take more courses and not piss off the instructor.

 

[girlwithbigtanks]

Dive instruction is a race to the bottom. It always has been. Pay is a joke as a puppy mill dive shops. Paying my kids’ ski or golf instructors…$$$$. Right now Sitting while kid in a hockey clinic. $$$$ I feel bad when someone asks me to recommend someone. I can’t in good conscience.

I had 1 good boss and fair compensation in 20+ years of paying membership fees. He retired. I lasted only a few courses of crap after that.

People do pay good money for good instruction. Dive shop pay is a joke.

 

[NothingClever]

The drift towards absolving certifying organizations of any responsibility is telling.

Instructors are a reflection of an organization’s culture.

The attempted parallel about driver’s training just doesn’t hold water. Those licensed drivers aren’t officially bearing the brand of the organization that trained them to drive nor are they certified to train new drivers and issue them licenses to drive. Dive instructors are doing both - bearing the brand and issuing licenses.

EDITED: I think it’s dishonorable if we rationalize and perpetuate the dysfunctional practices of this industry when we’re at an age we should be flexing our wisdom and wielding influence to fix it.

 

[rmssetc]

Very few people die before or after training.

True, very few people die before they take a SCUBA class.

However, every diver will die either before or after training.

Getting back to the original post, I wonder how this is handled in comparable sports (skydiving, mountain climbing, skiing). Do the agencies that certify those instructors take responsibility for instructor quality, post-certification? This could be shown via requirements for continuing education, periodic recertification, post-certification evaluation of instructors (announced or undercover), etc.

 

[TravisD]

Getting back to the original post, I wonder how this is handled in comparable sports (skydiving, mountain climbing, skiing). Do the agencies that certify those instructors take responsibility for instructor quality, post-certification? This could be shown via requirements for continuing education, periodic recertification, post-certification evaluation of instructors (announced or undercover), etc.

Dumb question, but do those activities require insurance? In the US at least, insurance is a must-have for anyone doing SCUBA instruction (not just from the actual liability aspect, but many facilites/etc require it to use).

Could we get insurance without the air cover of the Agencies? I'm guessing not.. at least not for a semi-reasonable rate.