On the merits of cranking up standards.

[boulderjohn]

Our "nitrox divers" from NAUI look better in the water than most PADI instructors. They are held to ridiculously high standards and NAUI does allow you to put higher standards on the students to pass the class.

Wow! How long did it take for you to evaluate all the PADI instructors in the world so that you can make that judgment? It must have taken a massive effort.

I just mentioned that my niece was certified as a diver after one pool session and a single dive to a depth of 10 feet. When I offered to dive with her, she said she was afraid to--she really didn't think she had a clue how to dive. But, since she is now NAUI certified after that pool session and dive, I guess you would estimate that she is still probably a better diver than I am, since I am a PADI instructor.

You have a very well established and well deserved reputation as an incessant PADI basher. I know that. I just wish sometimes you would give it a rest.

 

[tbone1004]

that was not a padi bash. that was not a pro for naui and it has nothing to do with their training through naui. it has everything to do with being able to hold them to high standards and them having over 20 hours of pool time over a full semester before they head to open water and having observed many standard padi instructors. there are lots of exceptions, but it doesn't change the rule. PADI made a choice, they wanted to make a lot of money, and that choice does not spit out high quality divers. They are trying to turn the boat around and I am thankful they are, but the shear volume of instructors means they have absolutely no control over the instructors or the students they churn out. you can't deny that, it's a fact and you actually said it in your first post in this thread. PADI has built incredible curriculum and they have fantastic people at headquarters, but they are far too big to manage and police themselves and their reputation is quantity over quality. Not everyone goes through the training progression that they envision as a perfect world and that bit of information is why their reputation is where it is.

to my example above, they teach calculus, they teach it very well, but not everyone takes it before they try to do calculus which results in cavern classes basically being "let's break everything you know about diving and start over from scratch because nothing you learned other than don't hold your breath and how to clear your mask is relevant. It's not just padi, it's all of the big agencies, NAUI included, the difference is NAUI allows me to actually hold students to standards much higher than what they do, including doing ditch and dons, rescues, underwater swims, and independent navigation. PADI doesn't allow you to require that, and it's a pro and a con. This is also why i will never teach open water through a dive shop, you can't do it and be profitable

 

[wetb4igetinthewater]

I agree. I believe students exiting a program that truly sticks to standards will produce divers of very good quality. I have seen it often. Unfortunately, it is also possible to certify students without having them meet those standards.

I tell my students what the standards are, repeatedly through a course. I tell them to ask what the standards are if they continue training (which I hope they all do) with whatever instructor they choose. I tell them this because now that I'm an instructor myself, I realize where my instructors in the past violated standards and cut corners.

Now that I think about it. I think that as part of submitting a certification card, the student should sign each skill was performed adequately. That all required material (listing each one) was used.

It might be a pain, but I think it will help with reducing (eliminating?) some of the problems we see. Thoughts anyone?

 

[kr2y5]

This great effort to ensure high teacher quality is extremely expensive and time consuming. Despite all of this, horrible teaching abounds.

What do you believe is the reason?

I can think of a couple of potential generic "points of failure" that might apply here and elsewhere, I wonder which of them play a major role and what is being done to mitigate these problems...

(a) Teachers. They strive to perform at their best during review, but revert to doing a sloppy job otherwise.

(b) Reviewers. The review scores are inflated because evaluators feel pressured to do so, e.g., because having to find a new teacher is expensive and time consuming.

(c) Methodology. By construction, the review process is just not guaranteed to provide a very meaningful output (e.g., because what's being measured just isn't very predictive of a high quality of teaching), so in the end, actions based on its output don't change a whole lot. [ Disclaimer: I'm not implying any criticism here, just contemplating the possibility that constructing a review process that gives reliable results could be an inherently very difficult problem. ]

 

[boulderjohn]

What do you believe is the reason?

I can think of a couple of potential generic "points of failure" that might apply here and elsewhere, I wonder which of them play a major role and what is being done to mitigate these problems...

(a) Teachers. They strive to perform at their best during review, but revert to doing a sloppy job otherwise.

(b) Reviewers. The review scores are inflated because evaluators feel pressured to do so, e.g., because having to find a new teacher is expensive and time consuming.

(c) Methodology. By construction, the review process is just not guaranteed to provide a very meaningful output (e.g., because what's being measured just isn't very predictive of a high quality of teaching), so in the end, actions based on its output don't change a whole lot. [ Disclaimer: I'm not implying any criticism here, just contemplating the possibility that constructing a review process that gives reliable results could be an inherently very difficult problem. ]

It would take a book to explain why bad teaching abounds in a system that has poured tons of money, time, and effort into ensuring that it doesn't. Perhaps I will write that book some day. Probably not. My point was that if a system with that kind of resources can;t do it, how do you expect a system with a fraction of those resources to do it? I actually think it is remarkable that it does as well as it does.

 

[boulderjohn]

If you can translate the rest of the quote into something I can recognize, I will respond.

I do understand this:

NAUI allows me to actually hold students to standards much higher than what they do, including doing ditch and dons, rescues, underwater swims, and independent navigation. PADI doesn't allow you to require that, and it's a pro and a con.

A PADI instructor cannot FAIL a student for the inability to perform a task or demonstrate knowledge beyond the curriculum. Does that mean we can;t teach beyond the curriculum? Of course not!

We don't fail students for not performing the standard skills the first time, either--we keep teaching them and teaching them and teaching them until they demonstrate the knowledge and skill required by the standards. We can do that with anything else we want, too, as long as it is specifically banned for safety reasons. In fact, an oft-qiuoted (in past discussions like this) message from CEO and President Drew Richardson explains the importance of using our experience and knowledge to add to the basic curriculum. Sometimes it is just a simple observation in the classroom that the students understand what you are explaining. Whatever it is, we cannot tell a student that he or she has failed because of an inability to understand or do something that is not in the official course, but we sure as heck can teach it to our satisfaction. In the shop I worked for previously, the Course Director in charge of our program asked each of us to make a list of all the extra stuff we taught in class so he could make a common list of extra stuff that would ensure a more consistent experience for our students. Does that sound like it is forbidden to add stuff to the class?

I am still waiting for you to explain how the NAUI instructor who certified my niece after one short pool session and one dive to 10 feet made her so much superior to me and all the other PADI instructors. Is there a magic decoder ring NAUI instructors are given that they wave over students to give them that ability?

 

[kr2y5]

My point was that...

It wasn't my intention to contradict what you said, my question was orthogonal to the point you were making.

if a system with that kind of resources can;t do it, how do you expect a system with a fraction of those resources to do it?

Well, for the same reason that, e.g., innovation does not happen exclusively in large corporations with a lot of cash lying around. If something is not strictly a function of the amount of resources poured into it, but instead depends on some other factors, then we can't automatically jump to the conclusion that if it didn't work for X with more resources, then it can't possibly work for Y with fewer resources. We have to consider other factors besides just resources, and any potential differences between the the two domains. That's why I asked you about the reasons why it has not worked, in case highlighting these reasons could help to shed light on the matter being discussed in this thread. Does teaching scuba, or evaluating scuba instructors, involve precisely the same kinds of challenges as teaching in general? ( It's not a rhetorical question, or an attempt to imply anything, I ask simply because I don't know. )

 

[tbone1004]

you don't get my point at all do you? Did you actually read what I wrote? I never said anything about NAUI being better than PADI, they are not, they are just different. NAUI allows their instructors to fail students for failure to perform skills that the instructor deems necessary regardless of whether it is in the standards or not. For some instructors that is a huge advantage especially when not using the traditional dive shop model. That allows NAUI instructors the option to make an OW class much more involved than PADI. Again, it is NOT a bad thing to do what PADI did, their theory is infinitely better, the problem is they are so big they have no ability to control what the instructors actually do. There are fantastic PADI instructors out there and there are wretched NAUI instructors, it isn't the agency it is the instructor when we are talking about any of the big agencies. Stop bringing your experience with your niece up because it is in no way relevant to the comments that I have made on the subject and please read what I actually wrote before accusing me of bashing PADI and glorifying NAUI like you did. I don't agree with the way PADI chooses to teach diving because they are in it for the money, that is their choice, it doesn't work with the way I believe diving should be taught, and no I don't believe they are putting out safe independent divers at the OW level. That is not actually a problem because with the way they structured their training progression, you are never supposed to stop at the OW level, the problem is the vast majority of divers do, and that's the problem with all of the agencies and why you have to shop for an instructor not an agency. If everyone followed PADI's progression like they wrote the curriculum for, we wouldn't be having this discussion.

Why is it the instructor? It is the instructor not the agency for the sole purpose that they are all so big that they have absolutely no ability to control the quality of instruction, they can only hope and pray that the outline that they made is good enough to keep people as safe as possible. The easy exception to this rule is GUE who keeps their instructor corps very small and make it extraordinarily difficult to get into, that's the only way you can actually keep tabs on all of your instructors. PADI, NAUI, SDI, etc will never be able to do that with either their recreational or technical instructors, there's just too many of them. You want to fix diving instruction? The only way to do it is to remove all of the junk courses in the middle of the training progression. Have what is now the PADI OW course qualify you to dive with supervision from a diving professional and you can get that in a weekend at the resort of your choice, no unsupervised diving allowed. Have a minimum week long very intense training session to prepare you to actually dive on your own in varied environments, this is basically AOW from them, but separating those two courses is only done to increase $$. Make the requirements to become an instructor much more stringent, and keep the amount of instructors small with mandatory ITC's every 3-5 years to renew. Just as nasty as your first one was, none of this refresher bs.
Why won't any of the big agencies do it? $$$$$ Again, not a problem, just a choice. Without the agencies doing that, the gear that we take for granted now wouldn't be out there and we'd still be DIYing all of our gear or modifying a very limited selection of commercially available gear. It is up to the diver to decide what their end goal is and choose their training progression appropriately, trying to fix training at the agency level is a lost cause. PADI has stepped up their game hard in the last 2-3 years and they're trying to turn the boat around, only time will tell if they can actually get their instructors to stop paddling in the other direction

 

[boulderjohn]

Does teaching scuba, or evaluating scuba instructors, involve precisely the same kinds of challenges as teaching in general? ( It's not a rhetorical question, or an attempt to imply anything, I ask simply because I don't know. )

I am not questioning your motives whatsoever. It is a wonderful question, one I dealt with at great length over my professional career, a large part of which I was involved in the evaluation and quality control aspect, and one I deal with now as but one dive instructor in a shop full of other instructors. I have a lot of training in this, and my responses indicate my level of frustration in both arenas.

I did not reply specifically to the "why" question for the reason I gave: it would take a book. The biggest mistake would be to assume there is a simple answer with a simple response. Here is an extremely brief summary of some of the issue, each of which could be a book chapter:

1. The teacher does not believe it makes any difference. I was a researcher on a study that (to make this as brief as possible) compared teachers whose students generally performed miserably on an assessment with teachers whose students performed brilliantly. (There was no difference in the ability of students prior to teacher instruction.) In a survey, 100% of the teachers of the poorly performing students said that student performance was 100% a result of student ability and effort--instructional practices did not matter. 100% of the teachers of the high performing students said that ALL students could achieve at a high level, and it was the job of the teacher to find the approach that would succeed with each student. If you don't believe it makes any difference how well you teach the course, why make an effort to do a better job? If you believe a student's poor performance is a result of your inability to intervene in the learning properly, why would you not do all you can to make the student successful?

2. The evaluator does not have expertise. If the evaluator does not truly understand instructional theory, then how can they be instructional leaders? In most schools, the administrators who are in charge of training and evaluating teachers were not themselves exceptional teachers and don't know how to teach it or recognize it. They usually got to that level of leadership through some other route; in fact, many got there because they were unsuccessful in the classroom and thus unhappy in that role. In a dive operation, how liekly is it that the person in charge of instruction has true knowledge of what it takes to teach effectively?

3, The course is not taught as designed. In 1970, John Goodlad tried to compare different instructional programs to determine which were most effective. He went into classrooms and observed teacher performance. His primary discovery was that it was impossible to answer the question because it did not matter what the teachers were supposed to be teaching, they were in fact teaching whatever they damned well pleased. Once the door of the classroom was closed, teachers taught for the most part the way they had been taught themselves, for better or worse. The same thing will be true in scuba. I have had in depth conversations with the people who direct the educational programs with PADI. I had something to do with the last changes in the OW program, and I know the thinking behind the changes. I argued over aspects of that thinking. These people know what they are talking about in terms of instructional theory. They created a program that is well-designed. Sadly, they have very little control over what happens in the actual class.

4. Pressures exist beyond the control of the program. There may be a number of reasons that instructional leaders make very bad educational decisions, I remember a series of arguments I had with a principal I otherwise highly admired. He defended the fact that he had some really, really, really, really bad teachers on staff because those individuals were vital to other aspects of the program--coaching athletic teams especially. If you don't have a winning football team, there will be Hell to pay with the community, and the principal could lose his or her job because of it. If having a winning football team requires you to place its coaches in teaching positions in math, English, and science, where they were demonstrably incompetent, well, that was the price you have to pay. I once served in a 20 person English department in which 5 of the teachers (25% of the staff) had been hired in the past to coach basketball, had proven incompetent in that area, had been fired from coaching, and then had fallen back to end their career destroying students' lives in the classroom. the scuba equivalent is all the financial pressures to earn a dollar. Renting time in the local pool costs a lot of money. So does a lot of the overhead involved with instruction. If you are afraid your source of income could vanish, you might cut corners, too.

These are all I have time for now.

 

[drrich2]

"If so, that brings the question what exactly [pick whatever scuba certifying agency] in your opinion should do to raise the quality of instruction:"

First, I suggest figuring out your educational target. From other threads discussing the 'decline' in scuba instruction, IIRC, the basic argument seems to be that way back when a # of instructors were ex-military, taught what they individually saw fit for a time (which could include push ups in gear, harassment drills, etc...), many divers were fit, more adventurous/independent types who dove more locally, over time the agencies arose and standardized much of instruction, courses were broken up to be more modular ('bite-sized'), and made easier, and more divers are less fit, less independent, travel to dive and stick to diving very benign conditions led around by a guide...and yet I've at least read it claimed fatality rates are lower these days despite these hordes of 'unsafe' divers.

Criticisms to my mind seem to involve:

1.) Divers are too insecure and exit the hobby. This cuts business opportunities.

2.) People who shouldn't be allowed to dive get certified and dive.

3.) People with poor buoyancy damage the reef (but attitude and awareness may be factors; this isn't the only cause of reef damage).

4.) Some old school divers seem to resent routine reliance on dive guides at tourist diving locations. Some divers will never be good at navigation. And so the bickering continues.

5.) Some diver fatalities would be prevented if minimum standards were higher. But diving overall seems reasonable safe for an adventure sport.

6.) Some old school divers seem to resent poor trim & other bad technique, even if the offending newbie has a good time and doesn't hurt anything.

Which problem are you looking to fix with your improved teaching system?

Richard.