I guess this is a twist on the old "Which Agency" thread. And I'll start by saying I don't have a dog in this fight, I'm just curious. Which of the major agencies, PADI, SSI, NAUI, have the better training manual at the open water level. For those who have seen them, whose do you think has been kept the most up to date, whose is the most thorough, whose, if any, may still be useful to the owner some time after their initial training has passed?
I understand the basic skills taught at the OW level are essentially the same between agencies and that the course quality itself will depend greatly on the instructor; but I found myself looking at my old OW manual the other day and got to wondering, does any particular agency put more effort into their print materials than the others?
I only have enough experience with IANTD and PADI materials to have an opinion about those so I'll comment mostly on those particular ones and comment only generally about what I know of others.
To start with, PADI.
PADI keeps its instructors and their instructional material well up to date. 4 times a year they communicate any developments and changes to *all* of their professionals via two publications and it is a requirement of membership to read all of that. In essence, if anything groundbreaking were to happen then all PADI pro's world wide would be updated about it within about 4 months. If you have a question, no problem. They have a permanent staff of training advisors who you can phone with any question whatsoever and they will help you. As an instructor, this is an invaluable resource.
Likewise, their standards evolve over time. Every year a new version of the standards is published and any new practices are pushed down to the ranks. This year, for example, PADI has made some big improvements in the standards and within the time frame of about 8 months all of the instructor materials world wide in a large variety of languages will be updated and rolled out, including local workshops so that shops, CD's and instructors have a chance to hear how they would like to have this implemented and to ask questions. As an instructor I have a hard time thinking that any agency could do a better job of that.
I'm sure some other agencies do something similar but given the fact that PADI is bigger than all other training agencies combined, I think their ability to keep their instructors current is a model of how things should be done. From what I understand, other WRSTC agencies basically wait until PADI changes something and then copy it an propagate it through their own system a year or two later, if at all. One agency (and I won't name names here) doesn't appear to even write their own books. I've seen the books and appear to be straightforward copies of PADI's books with just bare minimum changes that were designed to not get sued for copyright infringement. The upside is that at least their books are good
On the student side, however, PADI is much slower to change. The student materials are updated every... I want to say 10 years or so. Since the instructors are up to date then students are still informed but I do find myself explaining on a fairly regular basis that the information in the books is out of date with respect to certain details. PADI doesn't do this arbitrarily, however. They attach a LOT of value to be absolutely accurate in what they say, so where some agencies make "knee jerk" changes based on new developments, PADI will wait until there is a convincing amount of research done on the topic to make the same change.
One example of this has to do with developments in ascent strategies due to "bubble" models. NAUI (not picking on NAUI, just saying) implemented a recommendation a few years ago to stop at 1/2 of the deepest depth for 1 min during an ascent for offgassing purposes. This was based on theoretical developments in bubble models. PADI *knew* about the development but didn't implement the same recommendation because there has been *zero* convincing research (in fact, to the best of my knowledge, zero research at all) to suggest that doing so makes any difference to your safety as a diver. In the end NAUI maybe be right and intuitively many divers may think this, but one thing is sure.... You know for sure that *if* PADI says it, it has been
proven. With some other agencies, no so much.
In my mind, this means that while PADI is generally behind the curve with respect to adopting new developments, as a student you can be very VERY sure that what you are being taught is tried and true. In fact, I'll go so far as to suggest that this may be the core difference in approach that defines most agency discussions.
On the topic of IANTD. I'll preface this by saying that I'm not an IANTD instructor but I know several and they all tell me that if you have a question about anything that, just like PADI, you can phone them and get someone on the line to help you. One of my friends had a particularly troubling issue occurring in one of his advanced courses and Tom Mount himself literally invited him over to talk about it over drinks. So access to the core thinking seems to be good.
Their student materials, however... WOW...... the words "stream of consciousness", and "rambling" come to mind. The words "structured", "clear" and "consistent" do not. Not even close. IANTD has good training because their instructors are good, but unlike PADI the IANTD materials seem to be utterly devoid of any foundation in educational theory or practice. I think Tom may have written them himself and while they *buldge* from pearls of wisdom, it's going to take a committed student to sift through it all to find them and to put the whole puzzle together.
In one way, one may argue that there is a benefit to this, which is that the "lazy" or "unmotivated" student won't end up with an IANTD cert. The flip side, however, is that they do nothing to make learning easy.
As for other agencies, I've read some of the GUE stuff and what I read was similar to the IANTD materials on the "stream of consciousness" scale. I've also seen materials from NAUI, BSAC, CMAS and several other recreational agencies and although I never read it in detail, nothing I've seen so far in terms of materials for recreational diving has been as bad as the materials I've seen for technical courses. Moreover, none of it seemed bad at all, with the exception of BSAC, which seems to be entirely instructor driven and highly inconsistent from one presentation/club to another.
R..
