What is the real difference in the training

[beanojones]

I think there's a few differences between soccer/volleyball and scuba diving - namely the theoretical knowledge required that forms the foundations of diver safety. Such as the dive physics components that allow divers to understand why they don't hold their breath on ascent, or how the gas in their BCD will respond to changes in depth.

In that respect, "proper diving behaviour" is established, in many instances, from an understanding of the issue, rather than just parrot-like mimicry of an instructor's underwater habits.

As you say, base knowledge is needed to properly frame the need for behaviors, hence books and videos in most courses. My problem is when instructors lecture on something and then never ensure that it is put into practice at every moment divers are in the water., because the instructors have expended their interest in the subject by prattling on about it.

While we would like for people to understand the why, in fact the only thing that matters is that the students have correct behavior programmed in, and thus exhibit correct dive behavior. Quite simply, it takes me hours and hours to break bad the habits of con-ed divers, where it only takes minutes to teach the same behavior to OW students. I could give a rats ass if divers understand why waves on islands are always bigger in the afternoon, and it always rains in the morning. I do however care deeply if divers fail to maintain ocean awareness in the pool or in the ocean. It is an instructor's job to ensure the the divers exhibits proper water awareness, but it is easier to prattle on about the stuuf than ensure divers are exhibiting proper dive behvior, so that's what many instructors do, prattle on in the classroom, and don't focus their attention on the water.

 

[beanojones]

I won't credit GUE with inventing this concept, but I did introduce this myself after getting the idea from how fundies courses were run. I think it's an invaluable tool in providing performance feedback to students, especially those who have poor kinesthetic ability.


Seeing your instructor role-model is great... but seeing yourself in comparison to that really helps connections to be made.

It's pointless in an open water course. Proprioception is a skill learned from a lifetime of topside experience, and nothing learned on land transfers to being underwater. It's not that people don't know what to do, it's that they do not know how to do it, because all of their instinctive body behaviors are ineffective, or worse counterproductive underwater.

Radical instability with 360 degrees of freedom to move in a plane, is really only available on a unicycle on land, and then you add pitch and yaw, and rotational instability, and a lack of gravitational footing, and no OW student has any tools to deal with it.

Showing them videos just reminds that they suck, and gives proof. They lack the tools to do anything with that shaming experience besides feel inadequate.

Again, all the time out of the water is pretty pointless. The students have to be given effective tools and then put into a position where they succeed, so they stop trying to bring out of water experience to bear on the situation. Talking about things out of the water just encourages students to look out of the water for solutions, which just gets them bakc to trying out of water solutions.

Since the same facts are true even in con-ed courses, it is probably as counterproductive in those courses.

 

[beanojones]

I'll be the first to admit that GUE classes can (and often do) involve long debriefs on the surface or in the shallows. But that is actually part of the dive plan . . . they're great believers in training people not to rush out of the water, which can be a real issue when you've completed a high nitrogen load dive and getting out involves much exertion.

Does that count as part of the time "in the water"?

(Unfortunately, I can picture these debriefings happening with students still with gear on their backs.)

 

[DevonDiver]

As you say, base knowledge is needed to properly frame the need for behaviors, hence books and videos in most courses. My problem is when instructors lecture on something and then never ensure that it is put into practice at every moment divers are in the water., because the instructors have expended their interest in the subject

Very true, although I've not personally witnessed such behaviour. I guess that simply falls into the category of the instructor remembering/understanding why they are teaching the theoretical material - and that the end goal is diver competence and safety in the water.

While we would like for people to understand the why, in fact the only thing that matters is that the students have correct behavior programmed in, and thus exhibit correct dive behavior.

This I disagree with, for 2 reasons.

Firstly, the student paid for a course of training. That training involves both theoretical and practical skills, as laid out by the agency. The end result isn't just in-water competence. They pay for a [PADI] course...and should get a [PADI] course - with equal care and diligence applied by the instructor to all elements.

Secondly, theoretical understanding has a highly beneficial long-term advantage. It forms the foundations of development for problem solving and interpretive ability in future situations, where an otherwise clear-cut 'pre-programmed' (learnt by mimicry) solution is not available. It's a long-term benefit that exists far beyond the demands of an entry-level diver.

I don't teach people to 'just' fulfil the requirements and demands of entry-level open-water diving. I teach them to be divers... and give them the tools and foundations for continued development and growth. That includes exceeding the minimum requirements in all aspects of the course. I've been an educator, in some form or another, for all of my adult life - and I simply couldn't look at myself in the mirror if I didn't create the best results that I was capable of. The day I lose the motivation to do that, is the day I quit being an instructor.

I've seen many instructors who do fail to go beyond 'just' the minimum requirements - either through lack of motivation, incompetence, negligence or simply a lack of experience or instructional capacity. That observation is not agency dependant - although IMO the instructor training of certain agencies does very little to establish instructional motivation, competence or capacity in their candidates.

 

[DevonDiver]

It's pointless in an open water course. ...It's not that people don't know what to do, it's that they do not know how to do it, because all of their instinctive body behaviors are ineffective, or worse counterproductive underwater....no OW student has any tools to deal with it...showing them videos just reminds that they suck, and gives proof. They lack the tools to do anything with that shaming experience besides feel inadequate...all the time out of the water is pretty pointless. ... the same facts are true even in con-ed courses, it is probably as counterproductive in those courses.

With such a pessimistic view of your students' learning potential, and your own teaching capacity, I'm surprised you ever opted to become an educator.

Video feedback is used within a variety of disciplines, including sports and aviation, as a highly effective teaching tool. I've had great success with it. Many instructors I know have also. Perhaps you should try it before you write it off.

Of course, it'd mean going beyond the bare minimums of effort - which I get the impression that you are not in favour of doing.

 

[TSandM]

Wow -- what a total dismissal of video feedback as a method of training, even though it's proven effective in a number of different areas!

Beano -- I get the feeling that your instructional program is aimed a) at a certain kind of student and b) at producing a certain set of behaviors. Not all of us want to be "trained"; some of us want to be educated, intellectually AND physically. When you have that kind of persistently curious and analytical student, you are not going to satisfy them with what you are describing. My OW class didn't satisfy me, and I kept looking until I found an organization that could reach me on an intellectual AND practical level. People are not all the same, and they don't all want the same things, and they don't learn the same way. The riding clinician who I loved the most of all the people I ever worked with would have driven my husband insane, and he knew it, and knew enough not to work with that person.

 

[DevonDiver]

Beano -- I get the feeling that your instructional program is aimed a) at a certain kind of student and b) at producing a certain set of behaviors.

Some instructors' approach to tuition consists of the bare minimum, as educated to them on the IDC, nothing more, nothing less.

Student slaps some money on the desk, over 3 days a checklist is completed, student leaves with a card.

There's a number of words I could use to describe my opinions on this approach to scuba instruction. For the sake of politeness, I'll choose "uninspired" in this instance.

 

[Thalassamania]

...

You can't give it all to them at one time.
​

In point of fact, you can, well ... I can, and I know a fair number of other people who can, so the most that you can say is the YOU can't ... that is a very different thing. Granted, it requires both a capable student and an instructor who knows how to, but it is quite possible.

 

[beanojones]

Video feedback is used within a variety of disciplines, including sports and aviation, as a highly effective teaching tool. I've had great success with it. Many instructors I know have also. Perhaps you should try it before you write it off.

Wow -- what a total dismissal of video feedback as a method of training, even though it's proven effective in a number of different areas!

Diving is unique in that none of the instinctual responses effective at every other point in human experience are of value to the doing it. (Excepting astronauts, to a certain degree).

Sports, even sports in which there in new activity (like skating on ice for ice hockey), still occur in the medium (air) in which all all other experience has been accumulated. Thus the proprioception we have gained in our lifetimes to date is of value.

Diving is simply nothing like anything we have ever done, because we are in a medium(viscous water) and in a state(weightlessness) in which we have no experience. And we are in a state of radical instability in the plane which occurs in no other circumstances, with pitch/yaw and rotational instability to boot. Even planes are remarkable stable in the plane even if they do have some instability. There is no experience like it other than the weightlessness in space, and even that does happens in the same sort of non-viscous medium that we live in. And the weighlessness of space is at least consistent in the breathing cycle. Diving involves a change in gravitational effects in one breathing cycle.

As I have said many times before, just because others are inefficient at training does not mean they are more anything (ethical, safe, committed, etc) than I am. And given the video evidence of the GUE course which sparked this thread, I'll stand by it. People can teach themselves to dive and managed to do so back in the day. It is out job to make them more efficient, not less. Especially when the long courses are turning out divers (and instructors) who exhibit a lack of basic water safety procedures.

Additionally, video may seem like a good idea until you realize that it is replacing time in the water. That is exactly what happened in the GUE OW course, the students got unnecessary (and, I would argue, counterproductive) video feedback instead of being evaluated and guided on their dive behavior every minute they were in the water. And instead of spending that time in the water.

 

[beanojones]

Beano -- I get the feeling that your instructional program is aimed a) at a certain kind of student and b) at producing a certain set of behaviors. Not all of us want to be "trained"; some of us want to be educated, intellectually AND physically. When you have that kind of persistently curious and analytical student, you are not going to satisfy them with what you are describing. My OW class didn't satisfy me, and I kept looking until I found an organization that could reach me on an intellectual AND practical level. People are not all the same, and they don't all want the same things, and they don't learn the same way. The riding clinician who I loved the most of all the people I ever worked with would have driven my husband insane, and he knew it, and knew enough not to work with that person.

First it is not my design or aim, it is the design and aim of all OW course: producing a set of appropriate dive behaviors. The theoretical background is there to help justify the behaviors.

During your training you put up with a lot. You managed to get to another place comfort-wise with experience and further training. Trust me when I say this, it is possibly to have much less frustration with the physical aspect of a course when the instructor is keyed to the water.

Certainly there are divers who have a thirst for deeper understanding of things, but as instructors we are neither particularly qualified (we don't even need a high school diploma), nor particular trained (no instructors I know have graduate degrees in education, much less do the research necessary to validate a particular education program) to give them that info. Instructors who think that because they themselves can dive, they have suddenly sprouted graduate degrees in educational research are a hindrance, not a help, because they replacing yammering with careful scrutiny of actual students behavior, which in the end is all any diving license is: A statement that the diver has been trained to exhibit proper behavior. It is also supposed to be statement that that same behavior was actually exhibited when diving during training. The only person available to teach and evaluaate that is the instructor who is there. He is at least supposed to be watching, evaluating, and shaping that behavior.

The previously mentioned GUE OW was a perfect example of talking, instead of verifying the behavior, because the in water stuff took second place to videos and yammering. They got video review, but they did not get evaluated on buddy and water behavior, because the instructor lost the focus on the water　at times.

It is not a surprise that he did though, because once instructors think they are fonts of wisdom rather than evaluators of in-water behavior, they cannot be bothered with silly details because they have important things to say. And these things matter more than whatever the students are doing in the water.