Certified or Qualified Instructors what should be the minimum?

[Quest]

I see it getting easier to become an instructor if you have the money. I know an instructor who got his OW and instructor certs in 1yr with about 50 dives logged. I know of another school in which after 6wks you get 16 certs including dive master.

So what does everyone think is the minimum requirements a dive instructor should have?

 

[LUBOLD8431]

I personally think that to be an Instructor, you should have to be a DM for at least 6 months, and be active during that time assisting at least 50 students to get certified. You should also have at least 200 dives under your belt before you become an Instructor.

I think you shoudl adjust your poll a little to include this option...

Thanks...

 

[MechDiver]

You migbt also include "This poll has been kicked around ad nauseum and is A: Boring, B: Waste of Time, C: Will Prove Nothing just like the last 25 Polls on this subject.

 

[ElectricZombie]

Number of dives and years diving is not a very accurate way to determine if someone will be a good Instructor.

There are people who have been diving for 30 years and have thousands of dives who are incredibly dangerous and highly unskilled.

Mech is right, these poll don't accomplish much.

 

[Amanda]

I just can't vote ! Your option "Asst. Instructor for 6 months and/or -50 Dives." would be my choice but the "and/or -50 Dives" is quite surprising - do you mean 50 dives in total ?? Or 50 Dives in the Assistant Instructor ?

Please clarify a bit

 

[Quest]

Amanda once bubbled...
I just can't vote ! Your option "Asst. Instructor for 6 months and/or -50 Dives." would be my choice but the "and/or -50 Dives" is quite surprising - do you mean 50 dives in total ?? Or 50 Dives in the Assistant Instructor ?

Please clarify a bit

I decided to do this poll after i met this diving instructor a month or so ago. Basically he got his open water cert and instructor cert in less than 7 months with i think with only 45 dives.

So i added the "-50" meaning less than 50 dives.

Basically im just curious about what the general diving population things about when should a person be able to become an instructor.

I personally think the diving standards are to low and thats why the diving industry is flooded with divemasters and asst. instructors while there arent many tech instructors in comparison.

So should they be a dive master for so many months or years and have a minimum number of dives or an asst. instructor for so many years with so many dives before they are able to move up into being an instructor.

I think a person could be like a fish in water but even so having only a few dozen dives when teaching divers seems scary to me.

I mean i do an average of 20 dives a week. So i log almost as many dives in 1 month that some instructor minimums allow.

Just doesnt make sense. But, im babbling

 

[Conor]

....which agency was he/she with ?

I thought PADI had a minimum of 60 dives to certify as DM and 100 as Instructor (both of which you could do the training but not be certified with less dives). Still not very high though. I also thought there was a minimum time from certificationin addition.

Personally I reckon the personality and ability are the most important indicators for a potential instructor and these can't always be got from a log book etc. But yes there should be a minimum number of dives and this should be as high as it can to get enough GOOD instructors coming through to keep the industry healthy.

 

[Lead_carrier]

Unfortunately, they let almost anything count as dives, and I am not just talking about one particular agency. Rarely is a dive log checked closely to see what type of diving is really being done. I know one fella that would dive for 15 minutes, float for 10, dive for 15, float for 10 in order to get enough dives to become a DM, and this was in a quarry. I'll give him credit tho, he did have almost 4 ocean dives.

IMHO, I think there should be a time and dive requirement. At least 18 months and 50 dives in various conditions before DM training can begin. Then stretch it out to 9 month intervals after that. Get enough time at each level to learn that we still have a lot more to learn before we start knowing it all.

 

[Quest]

Conor once bubbled...
....which agency was he/she with ?

I believe it was SSI.

Though check this out http://www.prodiveusa.com/career/jump/career_courses_diamond.htm

Thats a link to a program done by a local padi center. Basically if you never dove before you can take your open water course and 15 other courses including divemaster during a 6wk period.

Six weeks to go from never diving to padi divemaster.

 

[Quest]

Lead_carrier once bubbled...
I think there should be a time and dive requirement. At least 18 months and 50 dives in various conditions before DM training can begin.

I know this subject has been argued back and forth on BBS's for years. But, i wonder the following.

I have seen people in favor of X amount of logged dives, X amount of years diving, X amount of specific diving enviroments or styles of diving etc.

But, what if diving standards instead followed experience as flght instructors follow.

See they dont count how many flights you did. They count how many hours you have with a particular model (plane).

What if diving styles were broken into categories. Like lets take something like wreck diving with three categories.
1. Wreck without Penetration
2. Wreck within sunlight penetration
3. Wreck with line penetration

Then divers tracked how many hours they have done for each of those. Like maybe for "Wreck with Line Penetration" they have logged 14hrs while "Wreck without penetration" they logged 3hrs.

Would you say having logged 14hrs for a wreck dive with line penetration is a better milestone than saying i have 24 wreck dives?

Cause one of the common debates is what is a dive! You can have 20 logged dives but half of them could have been 15min dives while the other half could have been 60min dives.

Same would go with deep diving. Diving to 130FSW for 5 min. is not as significant as diving the same depth for 20min.

Time underwater in a specific diving enviroment seems to be a better way to measure experience (not knowledge) than logged dives.