Instructor tactics (split from accident thread)

[sandjeep]

If somebody wants the privelage of being AOW certified and all that that entails, I want to be sure they don't do what most are currently doing, which is for lack of a better phrase, blind trust-me dives. I don't blame the student(s), you just aren't aware of how they're babying you vs. teaching real required skills.

Regards

Hello,
Since one newbie has replied, I thought I would add my 0.02 cents as well. I was certified in May as open water and did my first 2 dives on the reef in Marathon, Fl. SOLO.
Now, before anyone starts, I bring more to the table then the typical newbie diver. That being said, I think that the training that Scuba_Steve is talking about is something that people should want to pay more for. I want an instructor (teacher) who will challenge me. I want someone who will chew me out when I screw up. I want an instructor who will piss me off and try to trick me. Training should be hard not, a giveme course.
An instructor worth his weight will teach what you will not forget the rest of your life.


and if it was not sooo cold up there, I would sign up for AOW with him.

 

[Xanthro]

I want an instructor (teacher) who will challenge me. I want someone who will chew me out when I screw up. I want an instructor who will piss me off and try to trick me. Training should be hard not, a giveme course.
An instructor worth his weight will teach what you will not forget the rest of your life.

I don't doubt that ScubaSteve is a good instructor, but I do not want to be tricked, nor do I want to be pissed off. I suspect many others feel the same.

Perhaps it is a difference in how people learn skills, but personally, having my instructor attempt to trick me would not make me learn faster or better.

In the example he gave, my guess is he was pretty incomplete on exactly what transpired, and I think based on his previous posts that tricked would be the wrong word, as was lured.

A dive plan is more than do not go below 70', it will also entail exactly what to do if a member of the team goes beyond the set maximum depth. Will the buddy "rescue" the other diver. If the maximum depth is passed, is the dive then called, or do you ascend back above maximum depth.

Having an instructor as a buddy team leading a student past the maximum depth for the dive is a trick and should not be employed. Having another student in a buddy team go past the maximum depth, and then gauge the whether the other student follows the dive plan is not a trick. That is a test of situational awareness.

My guess is ScubaSteve used the latter method.

 

[gangrel441]

A dive plan is more than do not go below 70', it will also entail exactly what to do if a member of the team goes beyond the set maximum depth. Will the buddy "rescue" the other diver. If the maximum depth is passed, is the dive then called, or do you ascend back above maximum depth.

Having an instructor as a buddy team leading a student past the maximum depth for the dive is a trick and should not be employed. Having another student in a buddy team go past the maximum depth, and then gauge the whether the other student follows the dive plan is not a trick. That is a test of situational awareness.

My guess is ScubaSteve used the latter method.

Steve, care to share a more detailed version of what the dive plan discussed was? The part I recall you stating specifically was that you said on four separate occasions and got acknowledgement 4 times from your student that the hard deck on this dive was 70 ft. While the rest of the details are also important, that is pretty telling.

Still not sure I like your approach, but I may need to put myself in one of your classes sometime just to see how well I do.

 

[paolov]

just the past weekend a newly certified person with just 4 OW dives joined our group.

a group of Dive instructors and DMs. without objection from any other instructors we proceeded to dive deep, 102ft. we did the descent very slowly checking the newly certified person.

after two days of diving all the instructors and DM agreed that the newly certified OW has done Deep, Boat, Drift diving with flying colors. she actually wanted to do night diving however not one of the pros wanted to do night diving.

so with that we agreed that she is just needs to do Underwater nav. and one more skill to be certified as AOW.

 

[Ayisha]

Split from the thread in the Incidents and Accidents forum ... carry on ...

... Bob (Grateful Diver)

Hi Bob,

My post that you started this thread with makes no sense (even to me) without the 2 posts above mine that I responded to in the original thread.
If you could put those two posts in this thread, it would make more sense and would be appreciated. Thanks. :05:

ScubaSteve, I have no idea what the rules or depth limits are for instructors during the AOW. I simply stated the maximum recommended limits for the AOW and Deep c-cards.

ScubaSteve, you probably should elaborate on how the student was lured, since it's causing confusion.

I have to admit that if it were the case that my instructor (3 1/2 years ago or perhaps even now) started to go deeper or pretty much did almost anything contrary to the dive plan, I would second-guess myself or figure that there's a reason for it long before I would second-guess the instructor. (Especially if he appears to be behaving rationally.) :05: And considering that many people doing the AOW have only their 4 o/w dives under their belt, I'll bet most people could easily be lured. :11:

 

[Scuba_Steve]

Hi Ayisha, Bob did what he could to separate the thread. Don't sweat how he did it. It works well enough, as the posts after your original one took on a life of its own, and I felt it best to seek the separation somewhere. And it's OK to call me just Steve

Thanks

 

[PavoDive]

As the saying goes, "More sweat in training, less blood in combat". I also believe that cutting those dependence ties that some students develop towards their instructors/DMs/experienced buddies is key to make a good, responsible diver.
Divers must understand that instructors (or otherwise more experienced buddies) do make mistakes, do violate rules and do mess things up sometimes. Divers must understand that they are responsible and accountable for what happened in any dive they did. That they need to become active in planning, deciding and sticking to the plans, not just followers of what somebody else planned or did. Sometimes this requires the instructor to step a little bit back and, under controled conditions, let the student see if he can do by himself. To this, I agree.

But "luring" a student deeper and then kinda scold him during the debriefing... That's teaching by counterexample; I know it works for some people (both in the learning and teaching sides), but it just doesn't have much appeal to me. Specially if you're underwater, where communications are impaired. Sometimes I intentionally make wrong table calculations to see if the students agree like sheeps or pinpoint the mistake, but I have full language capabilities in that situation.

IMHO if you "lure" a student deeper, you are telling him that it's ok to deviate from the plan, because that's what you're doing. The debriefing afterwards?? well, words are carried by the wind...

For me that's sort of "Do as I say, not as I do"...

Just as a side note that just came to my head:
Isn't it possible that a sharp student thinks that his instructor just messed up the plan, went deeper and is now trying to "repair" his mistake discharging responsibility upon the student? I, for one, would consider the idea

For me, teaching by both example and words involves more senses and thus is more likely to remain in the right format.

Happy bubbles

 

[Gac]

As someone with still few dives under my belt, I find myself completely undeceided about your methods, ScubaSteve. On the one hand, I've always thought that training as you describe is beneficial in a controlled training environment, but doing so in the field is a different story. The phsychological efects mentioned earliuer (mostly involving doubt) create an uncertainty which might be unacceptable to a student who is already dealing with many novel experiences.

I have a great deal of trust in my instructor. If I were on a dive with him and he deviated from the agreed-upon dive plan, I would be hesitant, but untimately would follow. I would definately be consious of the deviation but would still follow him because of my trust in him and his superior experience. There are limits, however, to how far I would trust him. If he said we were going to dive to 40', but he ended up goiung to 50', I would probably follow. If he says we're going to approach the entrance to a cave and look in, but he instead penetraters the cave, I would certainly NOT follow.

FWIW.

 

[dive dog]

To the PADI instructors....is there a rule or direction that AOW students do not dive below 100 ffw? If so where is it written?

 

[Warren_L]

It is a PADI standard outlined in the instructor manual. Page 1-5 in my Advantures In Diving Program Instructor manual.