Why ‘everyone is responsible for their own risk-based decisions’ isn’t the right approach to take

[GLOC]

To clarify. I’m not above changing procedures. My Scuba class is unique Because I saw a better way. But no matter how well I teach my students, they and they alone are responsible for their safety. It’s up to them to assess conditions, buddies, gear and even crew. If you’re too lazy or busy, then you’re going to suffer or perhaps die. Like the guy who ignored the semi running the stop light. He might have had the right of way, but he’s still dead.

So you have changed the system which your students are exposed to. That system is not available to other people. I fell into the 'wrong crowd' after I got back from the San Diego trip and met up with a bunch of divers from GUE-UK. I did my AOW that summer. I then did TDI AN&DP and GUE Fundies in Mar 2006. Since then, all my training has been with GUE.

 

[boulderjohn]

@boulderjohn so your school system is now error free? Why not? Hopefully, you no longer count any answers as wrong, since that’s really the teacher’s fault, not the student’s. Oh wait, its not the teacher’s fault, it’s the school’s fault. Higher even? Where do we stop with the blame shifting? Ultimately, the student gets a good grade or a poor one. They either succeed and move on to higher education or they flip burgers for a living.

I can’t blame my high school for how much I don’t know. More importantly, I’m not going to. I’m not sure when personal responsibility fell out of vogue, but that’s a huge problem today. I don’t believe that when you make an error, you should blame anyone else but you. It’s not for me.

One of the things I used to teach was logic. Here are some website explanations of a fallacy that goes by a number of names. These might be helpful here. It might be called either/or fallacy; false dilemma, black/white fallacy, etc.
False Dilemma
Either/Or Fallacy: Examples & Overview - Video & Lesson Transcript | Study.com
False Dilemma Examples

Another interesting read is Howard Gardner's Leading Minds: An Anatomy of Leadership. This excellent book talks about the importance of a leader's ability to communicate with a target audience. He identifies the key problem with that communication when dealing with a diverse audience--a portion of that target audience is permanently locked into either/or thinking, and they are not able to see that truth has shades of gray and lies somewhere in the middle of those extremes. That portion of the audience will never respond appropriately to complex arguments, because complexity sounds like a lie to them.

In this case, the errors we are talking about are the result of both individual mistakes on the part of the person making the error and flaws in the system. Assuming all errors are the fault of the individual means you can never improve the system.

 

[boulderjohn]

@boulderjohn so your school system is now error free? Why not? Hopefully, you no longer count any answers as wrong, since that’s really the teacher’s fault, not the student’s. Oh wait, its not the teacher’s fault, it’s the school’s fault. Higher even? Where do we stop with the blame shifting? Ultimately, the student gets a good grade or a poor one. They either succeed and move on to higher education or they flip burgers for a living.

As a former teacher, school administrator, and Director of Instruction for a major education provider, I assure you that poor teaching is a major reason for student failure. All recent research says that the the most important of all the factors leading to student success or failure is the skill of the teacher. Yes, it is the student who faces the consequences of teacher performance, but the fact that it is the student who suffers does not absolve the teacher of blame. A high quality school will act when it sees evidence that a particular teacher is not performing adequately in the classroom. A school district will not act if it believes that the fault for failure lies solely with the student--and there are many who believe that due to the highly flawed Coleman study on student performance from 1967.

 

[GLOC]

Thanks @boulderjohn. Links saved for future reading/reference.

 

[boulderjohn]

I would like to describe a research study in which I participated because the results speak to this issue. A portion of our very large school district conducted an experiment with an innovative writing test of its own design at grades 4, 8, and 10, and our team analyzed the results. We could not publish the results outside the school district because the size of the study meant it would be too easy to identify individual participants and their individual results, so I cannot link to it.

The basic results were publicized, and they showed that 57% of the students scored at a level of 3 or 4 on a 4-point scale, meaning 43% either did very poorly or showed a need for improvement. The individual teachers involved got a report telling them how their students did, but they were not given a report on how any other teachers' students did. What they did not know (but we did), was that not a single teacher in any of the grades had students score anywhere close to 57% proficient or better. Every teacher scored either in the 90% range (or above) or the 20% range (or below). All teachers were teaching mixed ability classes.

We did an anonymous survey to get the teachers' responses to the test. Because we knew of the tremendous disparity in results, we were able to know with good precision how the anonymous teachers taking the survey had done because the first question we asked was how they felt their students had done. On a 5-point Likert scale, every response was either a 1 or a 5. That meant we could then sort all their other responses by the quality of their students' performances.

For one question, we created 5 different philosophies of education, worded as objectively as we could, and asked them to choose which matched their beliefs most closely. The results were unanimous. Every single one of the teachers whose students had done poorly said that the primary factor in student performance was student ability, and there was little to nothing the teacher could do to make a difference. Every single one of the the teachers whose students had done well said that all students had the ability to succeed at a high level, and it was the job of the teacher to find and apply the best instructional strategies to make that happen.

So, if you were a school district administrator of a school district receiving that report, would you look at changes in your system to improve results, or would you hope you got better students to improve results?

 

[Dive Sitnalta]

So, if you were a school district administrator of a school district receiving that report, would you look at changes in your system to improve results, or would you hope you got better students to improve results?

On a micro scale, I agree that improving the system is clearly the choice. Dive Operations and Shops can refocus efforts and clean house if necessary to improve student performance. On an industry scale, not so simple.

(Warning DIR Argument) I think the quality/safety issue has a lot to do with why some folks migrate to the occult of niche groups and clubs. Isolating themselves from the larger population of divers. To be surrounded by a system of like minded individuals. A large portion of the population tease DIR types, orgs, and clubs for their cult like equipment configurations and strict adherence to internal standards and drills; however, the complaints of poor instruction, unsafe guides, harrowing experiences, failing gear... they all validate the position of DIR practitioners.

So to tie this back into the education portion of the thread, one can choose their school in this free market. One can choose their instructor. Though as indicated earlier, new divers don't know what they don't know. Essentially, divers can choose the system to which they subject themselves. Want cheap and fast? You get low quality and low output. Willing to search for value, willing to find quality, willing to pay what it's worth? Reap the benefits of a great system.

Dive operations, whose priority is numbers and throughput, will ultimately sacrifice their quality... but there are plenty of new divers who... don't know what they don't know. So there will always be a market for those types of operations and it will always outnumber the high-quality shops. Though it is possible to have an operation that has it all. Takes leadership and experience to do so. Plenty of experience out there, plenty of untapped leadership, just need to foster it.

Can anyone list an operation or organization that specializes in recruiting new divers and have the diver leave their initial open water/recreation level training with proficient skills? Then keep their divers all the way through Dive Pro or Tech levels? Just curious.

 

[wetb4igetinthewater]

I would like to describe a research study in which I participated because the results speak to this issue. A portion of our very large school district conducted an experiment with an innovative writing test of its own design at grades 4, 8, and 10, and our team analyzed the results. We could not publish the results outside the school district because the size of the study meant it would be too easy to identify individual participants and their individual results, so I cannot link to it.

The basic results were publicized, and they showed that 57% of the students scored at a level of 3 or 4 on a 4-point scale, meaning 43% either did very poorly or showed a need for improvement. The individual teachers involved got a report telling them how their students did, but they were not given a report on how any other teachers' students did. What they did not know (but we did), was that not a single teacher in any of the grades had students score anywhere close to 57% proficient or better. Every teacher scored either in the 90% range (or above) or the 20% range (or below). All teachers were teaching mixed ability classes.

We did an anonymous survey to get the teachers' responses to the test. Because we knew of the tremendous disparity in results, we were able to know with good precision how the anonymous teachers taking the survey had done because the first question we asked was how they felt their students had done. On a 5-point Likert scale, every response was either a 1 or a 5. That meant we could then sort all their other responses by the quality of their students' performances.

For one question, we created 5 different philosophies of education, worded as objectively as we could, and asked them to choose which matched their beliefs most closely. The results were unanimous. Every single one of the teachers whose students had done poorly said that the primary factor in student performance was student ability, and there was little to nothing the teacher could do to make a difference. Every single one of the the teachers whose students had done well said that all students had the ability to succeed at a high level, and it was the job of the teacher to find and apply the best instructional strategies to make that happen.

So, if you were a school district administrator of a school district receiving that report, would you look at changes in your system to improve results, or would you hope you got better students to improve results?

Oh man, this explains so much. Thanks for posting.

 

[jlcnuke]

I'm seeing a problem with how people are using the phrases in this thread... so I'm going to make the two following statements and explain their differences:

1. Everyone is responsible for their own decisions and actions.

2. Despite being responsible for your own decisions and actions, external changes can be made to influence those decisions/actions in such a way that poor choices are less likely to be made.

The fact that better communication of diving risks/hazards could reduce the number of diving incidents, doesn't abdicate responsibility from the divers that are choosing to take those risks. It would be a positive change, but the diver is still responsible for what they do.

Root cause analysis is a wonderful tool that is used to recognize steps that can be taken to minimize the chance of a specific problem recurring, and often include many things that are not directly related to "the person who made the error" (i.e. modifications that could be made to procedures, training, etc), but the person who made the error is still responsible for their error. Or at least they should be (and were/are in my professional experience).

The "right approach", imo, isn't to try and abdicate personal responsibility, it's to find those root causes and try to figure out a way to take those lessons learned and have them applied in such a way as to minimize recurrence of the issues identified.

 

[GJC]

I dove my 17 years without a card or formal training, no one asked me for anything but times change. The reason to show a card is to protect the dive op by showing you have been trained to be responsible.




You might want to try it, the results will supprise you.


Bo

Your individual experience does not apply to all other individuals. You were either very smart, very lucky or some combination of both.

The reason we had the first cert cards was definitely not to protect dive ops. The first certs were issued by LA County Lifeguards because a lot of untrained divers were dying. Preventing untrained people from dying continues to be the reason for certification.

 

[Schwob]

Assume these two cases:

1.) I am not a diver. I hit the internet. Irder a compressor, dive gear and a bunch of books. Not necessarily in that order. Start reading and teach myself to dive safely on my own property. It's entirely possible and I think not breaking any laws. Might have trouble diving from boats or pkaces with controlled entry or getting fills elsewhere, but that's not the point.
The point is: Most would likely agree that the result of my actions is my own responsibility. Should I fail, my decendents might think they may have a case against the state for not having a law forbidding that or against an internet business or against the authors of the books in my bookshelf, especially the ones with notes as evidence I read them... But hopefully the courts would see it as my sole responsibility. Wouldn't you think so?

2.)
I get trained by a scuba instructor. Get my OW cert. and go kill myself while diving out of the envelope I was trained for and fail to deal with what I encounter correctly.

What exactly changed in case #2 such that now that the result is not my responsibility?