Adaptive Teaching : An Insight

“By completing this course, you have done enough to start learning.” 

Sir Ranulph Fiennes, Explorer, Author

These words were famously spoken when, at the end of a mountaineering course when a student asked Sir Ranulph if completion of the course made him an ‘expert’.

Unfortunately, across much of the scuba diving industry an attitude pervades where attendance on a two-day Adaptive Teaching Course makes an instructor an instant expert, capable the next day of taking a quadriplegic student on an open water course.

An Approved Medical Examiner of Divers likened this to qualifying as a new OWSI one day, and the next day taking an open water student to 100 metres on mixed gas.

I would liken the two-day adaptive instructor course, across agencies, to being the equivalent of a ‘try dive’, the information, both theory and practical contained in such courses is minimal. It gives the instructor a basic understanding of the concept.

Some agencies promote the concept of able-bodied instructors acting as ‘disabled’ students, displaying a range of mental and physical challenges.

Where they have learned those acting skills from, so they actually portray what it is like to work with a student who actually has such challenges, I do not know.

Adaptive Teaching A Definition

This is how I define adaptive teaching.

Adaptive teaching is an inherently more inclusive and focused approach to scuba diver training. It recognizes students’ differing physical and/or mental abilities/challenges; embracing the learning needs of each student. An approach where the instructor will continually assess the strengths and needs of the student and adapt their teaching accordingly.

In summary the focus of the instructor and their team should be:

“Everything you do as an AT instructor is impacted upon by the unique set of factors that each student presents You cannot use off the peg behaviours. It is all bespoke”

This is very different to how scuba diver training is generally approached.

Scuba Diver Instructor Training across all agencies is FORMULAIC. It focusses on the TECHNICAL skills.

Adaptive Teaching focusses on the NON-TECHNICAL (soft skills)

I would strongly advise anyone who wants to engage in adaptive teaching to undertake Gareth Locks’s Human Factors in Diving Courses as it approaches scuba diving in a very different way.

www.thehumandiver.com For me adaptive teaching and human factors go hand in hand.

A Journey

Adaptive teaching is about continual learning, as an instructor you should never have the arrogance to say ‘I am an expert’, every adaptive student you work with is different; technology, as medical knowledge is continually developing and impacts on this speciality area of scuba diving.

Unfortunately

The ‘instant expert’ concept leads to instructors taking on students who are way beyond their level of training and experience.

This increases the risk to both the adaptive diver and the dive team.

A Major Concern

A number of HSE Approved Medical Examiners of Divers and a number of Dive Referees are increasingly concerned by the lack of training among adaptive instructors/buddies and their knowledge of the injuries/illnesses with which they are working and how to respond in an emergency situation.

“This is a major concern of doctors, that instructors are taking on more than they can cope with and are ignorant of the risk. Hence, they are reluctant to issue a fitness to dive certificate.”

Dr Mark Downs; Approved Medical Examiner of Divers

Not Everyone Can Dive

Corey, is a RAID Advanced 35 Diver and is paraplegic. Despite the headlines of some agencies that suggest ‘Diving for all’, this is not a reality and they are aware of this. Some injuries/illnesses/conditions and certain medications/medication regimes are contraindicated to scuba diving.

Unfortunately, some agencies and individuals have overstated the benefits of adaptive diving and sadly in some cases misquoted research findings. This is particularly so in respect of mental health.

Dmitry who is a very experienced adaptive instructor said this:

“Anyone who claims that scuba diving is a magical panacea for mental health is either a liar or delusional”

Dmitry Knyazev

The Need To Be Honest And Display Integrity

The RAID Instructor Playbook stresses the need for honesty and integrity, dealing in a very straightforward manner with managing failure.

Across the industry there are numerous examples of adaptive students being qualified as divers when they have clearly not achieved the standards required for their level of certification.

One example is a woman who had been qualified by a mainstream agency as an Open Water Diver. On Facebook she wrote about her experience of diving on a holiday sometime after certification.

She could not kit herself up; she could not get to the dive deck under her own power.

She could not get into the water without assistance. She had to wear ankle weights, had a guide looking after her buoyancy and propulsion and another making sure her legs, which hung down did not hit the coral.

A main stream open water diver – NEVER.

I could fill many pages with similar stories that I or the team have encountered personally or have been reported to us.

Can Those With Changing Conditions Progress Within RAID

Simple answer is YES, with a properly managed developmental programme.

Tom (left) has Complex PTSD; Michael (right) has MS and Depression. Photographed on their RAID IDP at Roots Red Sea

Chris (foreground) bilateral amputee and RAID DM and dive team leader in Chuuk Lagoon

Adaptive Teaching Is Not An Ego Trip

Adaptive teaching is not about improving your ego as an instructor, it is 100% student focussed and they should receive the plaudits for their achievements; not the instructor saying “Aren’t I brilliant, look at what I have done!”

Dan with bilateral (both) leg amputee Chris (foreground) and Instructor Stuart (left)

“Thank you for believing in me!”

Dan Richards, through the shoulder amputee

Richard Cullen

Since 2009, Richard’s passion in scuba diving has been adaptive teaching. In 2014 he formed Deptherapy and has worked with many divers who have life changing mental and/or physical challenge.

He is Deptherapy Education’s lead Instructor Trainer. He brought Deptherapy and the instructional team over to RAID in 2019.

He will be at the 2025 Go Diving Show on the RAID Stand if anyone wishes to discuss adaptive teaching.