Divemaster & Instructor Qualifications: Your Opinion

[ZenDiver.3D]

Ah, yes - Poor choice of words on my part - instead of skills I should have phrased it demostrable traits that make a good instructor, some of which you pointed out. I was not referring to the rote skills of a scuba class (clear mask, etc). Sorry for the confusion. I guess another way of saying it is that there are traits to good instructors that may be gained by individuals at different rates, and for everyone that may be different. If a person is capable of demonstrating that largely undefined (hence the ending of my previous post) set of traits, then they are ready to teach.
Does that make more sense?

Ahhhh. Okay then. Much more sense.
And true, some do pick up things much faster than others.

 

[Divedoggie]

A top notch educator will be an expert in his/her field and will convey that knowledge and information while working with his/her students adapting to their individual ways learning. Some people are visual learners, others auditory, and other kinesthetic. The instructor/teacher/coach needs to have great teaching skills, be a great manager, a clear communicator, and a demonstrative example setter and should never settle for mediocrity.
However;
If you look at professional sports, how often do you see the most experienced athletes turn around at the end of their careers and start coaching? Almost never. In the NFL, there are a number of new head coaches who never played professional ball. Some of the coaches, like Josh McDaniels from the Denver Broncos are in their early thirties and have players on his team who are older and far more experienced than he is. The future will determine his success, but he's the man and is getting the big bucks for now.

Our children go to school everyday and are taught by young teachers with crispy new teaching degrees, and we assume that the institutes of higher education did an adequate job preparing them to teach our children. How many of these teachers actually have a background in English, mathematics, history, biology, or life in general?

It is the rare exception in scuba diving that someone, like Thal for example, has had a career in diving and science and then turns around and does serious instructing. Instead, I believe most of the Instructors out there are passionate about scuba diving and based on life experience, feel that they have what it takes to be an educator. They want to share their passion for diving with many other people, so they become Instructors.
They learn the material, and with some agencies how to teach the material. The minimum requirements needed to begin the IDC may be a bit low, but where do you draw the line? How many surgeries should a person have done BEFORE they are allowed in medical school? The key is internship.

Our dive center, for example requires a rigorous internship for our DMs, AIs, and new Instructors. If one of the new instructors has an extensive diving background, he/she will be given latitude, but that extensive background doesn't necessarily translate to the classroom atmosphere.

If you are a potential new student and have the luxury of interviewing your potential instructor, perhaps you can find an instructor who is very experienced, is actively instructing, is very thorough, safety conscious, demands excellence, and is actually a great teacher as well.

 

[Walter]

A diver needs experience to gain a certain level of proficiency to become an instructor

Proficiency is merely one aspect of teach. Experience also teaches divers how different divers approach the same situation. It shows them how things can screw up and how those screw ups can be corrected.

 

[sabbath999]

If you are a potential new student and have the luxury of interviewing your potential instructor, perhaps you can find an instructor who is very experienced, is actively instructing, is very thorough, safety conscious, demands excellence, and is actually a great teacher as well.

IMHO it's not a luxury. If I can't talk to the instructor, find out about his/her experience and what he knows, then I am not taking a class from him or her, ESPECIALLY the most important class, intro.

No way.

I will find an instructor who will meet my criteria or I flat won't do it. Period.

In every respect, students are literally putting their lives and well being in the hands of their open water instructors. Most will just blindly accept whatever instructor is assigned to them without question. This is BAD IMHO.

I am wanting to take a Solo class, and this fall I am going to be meeting with an SDI instructor in a town about 3 hours from us who comes recommended. I am going to meet with her and dive with her... she's going to see my skills, and I am going to see her skills... we are going to see how well we get on together. THEN we will decide if it is going to work out for us... me, if I can work with her and her if I am ready to take the class. THAT is how it should be done. IMHO.

 

[merxlin]

IMHO it's not a luxury. If I can't talk to the instructor, find out about his/her experience and what he knows, then I am not taking a class from him or her, ESPECIALLY the most important class, intro.

No way.

I will find an instructor who will meet my criteria or I flat won't do it. Period.

Can I ask how you knew to do that and what your criteria were? I am not asking because I disagree, but wondering how you came to that conclusion when most potential divers just find the LDS closest to them or with the cheapest price. Since it is a "certification" there is an assumption of attaining certain standards so why would one shop or instructor differ from another? How would the average potential diver know what criteria to look for?

 

[TSandM]

I don't think you can put a number on it. I do think that, to instruct, someone should have impeccable skills, and I personally believe that GUE's approach of requiring the instuctor be certified to a level above where they teach is a good one (i.e. intro to tech or cavern or something of the sort for OW instructors).

I also think they should have a breadth of diving experience, if for no other reason than to be able to answer student questions about diving in various environments. I think someone who instructs or assists with students should be someone actively diving for their own pleasure, because somebody who has run through the classes without doing much of that is going to have difficulties inspiring people with why this is a wonderful sport to continue to pursue.

I think it's important that someone who instructors or assists with students have been through some stressful situations underwater themselves, so they know how they react, and they can relate to the mental and emotional processes that students are going through.

In reality, it doesn't take a lot of diving skill or experience to shepherd someone through the modules of an uneventful OW class. But to be a superb role model for students, and to be on top of your game when something goes wrong -- that takes more, and maybe a lot more.

 

[skidshark]

i think for this levels for any agency must be like the candidate, must have at least 1000 dives and minimum of a year as diver, because in case of padi divers, i don't think a diver with 20 dives can start a dm course and must have 60 to become a dm. a DIVE-MASTER is a professional of scuba diving, and anyone with 60dives is not a pro, pls give me a break

 

[Divedoggie]

IMHO it's not a luxury. If I can't talk to the instructor, find out about his/her experience and what he knows, then I am not taking a class from him or her, ESPECIALLY the most important class, intro.

No way.

I will find an instructor who will meet my criteria or I flat won't do it. Period.

In every respect, students are literally putting their lives and well being in the hands of their open water instructors. Most will just blindly accept whatever instructor is assigned to them without question. This is BAD IMHO.

I am wanting to take a Solo class, and this fall I am going to be meeting with an SDI instructor in a town about 3 hours from us who comes recommended. I am going to meet with her and dive with her... she's going to see my skills, and I am going to see her skills... we are going to see how well we get on together. THEN we will decide if it is going to work out for us... me, if I can work with her and her if I am ready to take the class. THAT is how it should be done. IMHO.

I'm certainly not defending mediocrity. Just possibly shedding some light on who becomes an instructor or teacher or coach and their motivation for doing so.

Luxury is subjective.

You should be commended because you demand the best for yourself, and you obviously have the time, the ability, the means and the enough background knowledge to seek out the best instructor. Your commitment to excellence will pay off with a long, safe, and enlightened diving career. Ideally, it would be that way for everyone.

While there are new and inexperienced instructors out there, there are also many very responsible, committed, highly skilled, knowledgeable, experienced and excellent ones as well.

 

[sabbath999]

Perhaps I am in an unusual position as there wasn't an LDS within 100 miles of me (there actually is one now). There are two in a city a little over 100 miles of me, Columbia MO, plus there are many in St. Louis and Des Moines, which are about 150 miles from me.

I simply started stopping into places and talking with people. One of the shops I stopped in, in St. Louis (I won't mention their name) was pretty obviously a "cert factory" where people were moved through their programs like cattle. I talked to one of the instructors about training, and got the "oh, don't worry about it, we will take care of everything" blah blah blah. I asked who my instructor would be, if I could talk to them, and they said it would be "whoever is up that day". Goodbye. (BTW never in my life have I been more happy to have made this decision... I have dived with divers fresh out of their program, they are NOT ready to dive, don't know the BASICS of diving). The one place in St. Louis I didn't stop was Y-Kiki Divers, but I did later and met the folks there and have since done MUCH of my training with them because their people frankly know what they heck they are doing.

Anyway, I stopped in various other shops until I came across the one I decided to go with... because it was obvious to me the instructor had his head on strait, the class sizes were small, all the staff is extremely experienced, the cost was reasonable, they give their graduates unlimited free pool time for life (as long as they are already at the pool) to work on further skills, etc. BTW the shop is Captain Nemo's in Columbia, HIGHLY recommended for OW training, they guy who owns it is the lead instructor and has since become a good friend.

As far as why one shop or instructor would differ from another, they just DO.

Look at it this way. Lets say you are going to college. You are going to take Intro To Biology.

You have the option of taking it from Bunker Hill Community College's satellite classroom at Cambridge, or down the road at Harvard University. Same class, same specifications, etc. But... which is more likely to be better taught?

It is no different.

Lots of people don't care, they see SCUBA training as an obstacle to be minimized as much as possible... just get me my C-Card because I am going on a cruise. Many dive shops recognize this, and cater to it... and it becomes glaringly obvious when you talk to people about it.

I talked to people and found somebody who was more interested in TRAINING my wife than getting her certified. That's what sold us on them.

 

[Leejnd]

I
Here's my take on it. When I looked into getting my wife certified (I couldn't even swim at the time, I became a diver after she was certified) I shopped around for the person I thought would be the best instructor, and interviewed several before I choose the person I did. My priorities at the time was finding somebody who was "safety first", taught well above the minimum standards, and who had a lot of experience teaching students and who had a diverse diving background. The place I ended up with was an old-school dive shop where the instructor and his teaching DM were both cave divers with 20+ years of experience, who had taught thousands of students and who were extremely safety oriented. Turns out I made an excellent choice.

I highlighted in red something in your original post that caught my eye. Note that some certifying agencies are pretty rigid about NOT allowing their instructors to teach beyond what's in the course...EXACTLY what's in the course, no more, no less. Instructors don't necessarily have the option of teaching above the minimum standards - they can get in trouble for that.

We were aware of that when we went to get certified. Our instructors actually told us that. What we did was, we went through the course...and then got to know our instructors personally, and went diving with them just as friends. We probably learned more from them on those dives than we did in our actual courses!

We also then reached out to our local diving community, and began befriending local divers. I ended up being mentored by quite a few experienced divers, and I learned even more from them. So I got a wide range of experiences, opinions, and influences which I feel added significantly to my breadth of understanding.

To be honest, my husband and I did not feel remotely capable of going off and diving on our own after our OW class...especially not in the challenging conditions you find in our neck of the ocean. In our minds, our initial classes gave us just the most basic information. It was diving with experienced divers AFTER the class, coupled with a determination to learn as much as possible outside of the water (avid reading and participation in Scubaboard, for example) that gave us the confidence and understanding we needed to develop our skills.

Proficiency is merely one aspect of teach. Experience also teaches divers how different divers approach the same situation. It shows them how things can screw up and how those screw ups can be corrected.

Agreed - but as someone with 27 years of experience as a training professional (not in scuba - in telecommunications and biotech), it takes more than knowledge and experience to be an effective teacher. Not everyone has a knack for teaching. Take it from a person who has spent years trying to turn subject matter experts into instructors - it doesn't always work. The best, most experienced divers can be the worst teachers. There was a thread in here recently about an instructor who completely went off on a new student who didn't do what the instructor expected. That instructor might have 3000+ dives all over the world - but he clearly had no concept of how to deal with students.

I don't think you can put a number on it. I do think that, to instruct, someone should have impeccable skills, and I personally believe that GUE's approach of requiring the instuctor be certified to a level above where they teach is a good one (i.e. intro to tech or cavern or something of the sort for OW instructors).

I also think they should have a breadth of diving experience, if for no other reason than to be able to answer student questions about diving in various environments. I think someone who instructs or assists with students should be someone actively diving for their own pleasure, because somebody who has run through the classes without doing much of that is going to have difficulties inspiring people with why this is a wonderful sport to continue to pursue.

I think it's important that someone who instructors or assists with students have been through some stressful situations underwater themselves, so they know how they react, and they can relate to the mental and emotional processes that students are going through.

In reality, it doesn't take a lot of diving skill or experience to shepherd someone through the modules of an uneventful OW class. But to be a superb role model for students, and to be on top of your game when something goes wrong -- that takes more, and maybe a lot more.

Completely agree with this. And I would add to it, that the instructor needs to have some inherent ability to teach...the kind of ability that can't necessarily be taught (although it CAN be honed).

How do you find someone who has that? Good question. I have the benefit of having taught Facilitation Skills courses for years, and I asked a few questions in advance to give me some indication if our instructors had that. Fortunately they did.