Imagine if this was taught to newbie instructors during IDC's...........
Since PADI changed the standards it should be.
PADI never mandated teaching on the bottom. This was a habit that instructors had built up over time.
I remember when I started teaching neutrally buoyant in about 2007. It started with the descent. I changed the approach. I put a pause in the descent during every descent in confined water. My protocol is to get under water, pause and then continue. It's amazing how many times you make a descent in confined. When it came time to teach the hover, all I did was say "pause longer than usual".
Before that, instructors were going to the bottom and then trying to get BACK to neutral buoyancy and struggling with it. Some instructors weren't even able to demo it adequately. In my case, I was able to take a whole group down from the surface, pause for 30 seconds and then go diving. I initially did it as a way to save time so you weren't busy for 20 minutes trying to get a whole group into a hover. I could do it in 1 minute flat no matter how big the group was.
Once I started doing that, however, the dominoes started falling. I stopped putting students on the bottom for other skills and started briefing that the END result we were looking for is that all of the skills could be done together with hovering.... so I allowed them to "float while learning". Initially I met resistance from colleagues. Some of them didn't understand why I let students hover or stand in a fin-pivot while watching demo's for example. It looked chaotic to them. They told me that I didn't have control, that it was dangerous and that it was a standards violation, none of which was true.
The real "click" among my colleagues came when they started seeing the results. For example, I had a student who initially learned her mask R&R from a fin-pivot but during mod-5 confined, her pony tail was irritating her and she took off her mask, fixed it and put it back on again all while hovering. When I trained my daughter she picked up a traffic cone from teh bottom at one point, put it on her head and did all 19 skills in a sort of "skit" one after the other in a sort of "tin-man" routine..... while hovering.... (and oh, yeah, I was bloody proud of that). A few saw it and said, "I need to know how you did that"
And there were many other examples. They started seeing that the results were interesting even if some of them didn't know how to get to that point and a few were still convinced that regardless of the results it must have been a standards violation. One of those was even a CD. He told me that it was task loading and therefore against the rules. I ignored him and engaged him about the results and he eventually became a convert as well.
Then I met John and several others on Scubaboard who were already doing this in one form or another. We connected and decided to write an article about it. Thankfully John is both persuasive and a bonafide expert in educational theory with a Phd to back it up. He wrote the article, talked extensively to PADI and we were eventually allowed to publish. I guess they must have tried it out because shortly thereafter they announced that the standards would be adjusted.
R..
---------- Post added September 25th, 2015 at 05:32 PM ----------
So in what way are you NOT adopting the DIR philosophy?
The DIR approach involves a strict adherence to certain protocols, practices and choices of gear. It is entirely possible to look the part but not be DIR. I think I'm a good example of this. I've dived on DIR boats before and was able to "blend in" but I have not followed any GUE or UTD training. My training is all PADI, IANTD and TDI.
A "real" DIR diver would not accept me as a member of the clan because of that, even if I'm indistinguishable under water. Perhaps the best example of this is the click I had with TSandM. She and I clicked as buddies in a way that I've never experienced before (or since). I think she felt the same way about it. She was hard-core DIR. I was just another stroke. But we clicked HARD nonetheless.
R..