Incident on 80m (avg) - 30 min BT dive

[beester]

I have written about this phenomenon a number of times. For many tech instructors, explaining a teaching point and demonstrating it is "handholding," and they make it a point to say there is no handholding in their instruction. When you then fail to perform correctly because you did not receive that handholding instruction before you tried, you are then soundly berated for that failure, and berating is also perceived to be part of the "no handholding" philosophy. This is not something they do without realizing it--it is very much their intended instructional philosophy, and they are quite proud of it.

This makes the class an ordeal for the student, and it makes it much harder for the student to succeed. When they do finally emerge from that ordeal, though, they feel proud for having succeeded. They then feel a great sense of superiority over people who learned through handholding, and if they go on to become instructors, they will usually carefully imitate their earlier instruction as they deal with their own students. A number of years ago, education researcher John Goodlad showed that when they get into a classroom, teachers tend to teach their students the way they were taught when they were students themselves, even when they were taught in their teacher training classes to do it differently. I am sure the same is true of scuba instructors.

This is going off topic, but you and Diver0001 are making a valid point. I've been on both sides of the aisle so to speak. Communication breaks down if you are angry, are shouting or insulting, not only as an instructor teaching but also when you are criticising a diver.

I don 't need to defend GUE as such, but in my personal experience I've only seen it once with a GUE (fundies) instructor, who was doing the whole "gun ho" routine with a class of fundies students. Since I didn't know the GUE fundies instructor I went on my own business.

This has been my only experience like that within GUE. All my GUE courses (and I've done some) have been with different instructors because I feel every instructor has a slightly (or more pronounced) way of teaching. I think I benefit from different points of view on the same subject, that's why I tried to get as many different experts (instructors) as possible to teach me.

Of course there were instructors that I closely connected with because of common interest or look on life, there was 1 instructor who's personality clashed with mine. But all of them were very professional and although very very strict underwater were calm, responsive, criticising with detail so you could work on it and understood when the class had enough and needed a break. Nobody ever shouted at me or told me that I was a **** up. Some of those instructors I now call friends... that should say enough.

My motto when giving critique ... "kill them with kindness".

 

[RayfromTX]

Well as you say this is all assumption and we can't know why he didn't continue after fundies. Maybe he had his trimix tickets before fundies and is going to continue with courses... don 't know.

But you are totally right that in tech diving as a whole there still is some "alpha male" "gun ho" mentality. Case in point after my return I got some messages from divers, not asking how my diving went and what we saw, but just how deep we went and how much deco we did. I don't get that?! Of coures I have goals like but it's not deeper or farther (in case of caves), but participating in project work (which I'm already doing on a protected North Sea wreck and want to extend).




Totally right and to be honest I'm at a point in my diving were I'm totally at ease doing this with divers I know well. I have no problem at all to confess that I'm feeling not at ease, am stressed, something is wrong. I've had occasions on North Sea dives were I would just say to my buddy "watch me more closely underwater, I don't know what it is, but I'm feeling slightly stressed". I have called cave dives because of above.

However that is with "inner circle" divers... people I totally trust. Don't underestimate peer pressure and "losing face" specially when everybody has already invested quite a lot in the planned dive and / or you don't know the dive team very well.

Maybe because of his different background he didn't realise once underwater that it remains a team effort and he could communicate if something was off.

In any case without sounding harsh... I do feel that this incident was a break down of our (ad hoc) team effort.

- We didn't realise that he was maybe out of his comfort zone before the dive.
- We didn't see any clues (plan for example) that could have warned us.
- During our ascend we were slow to catch on to the progressive issues.

I might have asked right questions if I was diving this dive alone with him. But I was comfortable because one of my best buddies (RB80 diver) was with me and we don't need to talk to know what the other is thinking about the dive and are totally confident to speak out to eachother if we sense something is off. I had a sense of team because my RB80 buddy and the JJ divers were there...I didn't had to communicate (besides dive plan, gas, deco), and missed out on any stress symptoms that X might have had.

Team breakdown.

I have total respect for this post and the thread as a whole. Your willingness to share this incident and your potential failures in order to learn and teach others shows great strength of character and confidence. I am of course defining failure in this case as "could have done it better". Failure is too harsh a word.

 

[Darghu]

Do you mind to post your feedback on the Facebook group: Scuba diving accidents and the lessons they teach? Please.

It is an interesting experience to share.

 

[RainPilot]

Do you mind to post your feedback on the Facebook group: Scuba diving accidents and the lessons they teach? Please.

It is an interesting experience to share.

Maybe drop a link there to this discussion? May avoid doubling up on the same points

 

[Imla]

This also jumped out as a huge red flag. I don't know many GUE divers who would hold onto a line unless there was a ripping current.

Actually... this is one of the really correct things he did. At least on both my T1 and T2 classes we were told to grab the line in case of difficulties. In other words. It IS a red flag. It is a signal to his teammates that things are not the way they should be.

 

[beester]

Do you mind to post your feedback on the Facebook group: Scuba diving accidents and the lessons they teach? Please.

It is an interesting experience to share.

I'm not a member of that fb page Darghu, but of course if you want you can post a link on the FB page linking to this discussion.. by all means.

 

[PfcAJ]

Actually... this is one of the really correct things he did. At least on both my T1 and T2 classes we were told to grab the line in case of difficulties. In other words. It IS a red flag. It is a signal to his teammates that things are not the way they should be.

I'll grab a rope or a rock or whatever because hovering for 2hrs blows. I just wanna chill.

 

[RainPilot]

I trained hard to fly without any aids like autopilot, GPS etc. I can fly for hours without anything but muscle power and concentration.

First thing I do after takeoff? Pop the autopilot on.

Just because you can do something the hard way doesn't mean you should always do it that way.

 

[beester]

Yep It's NOT a beauty contest

 

[ChicagoScubaDiver]

Actually... this is one of the really correct things he did. At least on both my T1 and T2 classes we were told to grab the line in case of difficulties. In other words. It IS a red flag. It is a signal to his teammates that things are not the way they should be.

I agree, in a DIR inspired class I took with a local legend, one of our teammates (Diver Y) had a reverse squeeze which brought on vertigo. Diver Y grabbed the line and everyone just knew there was something wrong. We were able to safely get the distressed diver to the surface. It was a pretty tense 20' of travel.