On 10 March 2000 a group of divers entered the water at French Pass, an
area described in evidence as a “turbulent and energetic piece of water”. This
group comprised six members of a 14-week diving course and their
instructor ... The divers were to undertake a “drift dive” which involved
descent and allowing the current to move the divers under water. The divers
were drawn by a strong current into an extremely deep part of French Pass
and taken down to dangerous depths. As a result two of the divers died,
another is lost presumed drowned, and three survived after suffering serious
harm including, in the case of two of the divers, decompression illness. [P1]1

Reserved judgement between Department of Labour
and Nelson Dive Centre2 Limited, 9 May 2001

The explanation of events surrounding the French Pass dive accident, as described in the Reserved Judgement of Judge J. A. Walker, highlights the potential for devastating consequences for those under the care of outdoor ‘instructors’, and for their relatives. This presentation is based on my interpretation of the District Court case from which the dive company and the instructor were found guilty on a number of charges, in particular the first charge, whereby under section 15 of the Health & Safety Employment Act 1992:

Being an employer, it failed to take all practicable steps to ensure that no
action of an employee, namely ..., while at work harmed any other person,
namely (a named diver) in respect of a training dive at French Pass. [P3]

To provide a context, a brief outline of the instructor’s pathway to his award may be relevant at this point [P49-50]. The instructor had:

been diving since 1978 -(recreationally? - this is not expanded upon in the judgement).

1 . [P] relates to the paragraph of the Reserved Judgement of Judge J. A. Walker, being the hearing between the Department of Labour and the Nelson Dive Centre Limited, 9 May 2001.
2 . The Defendant 106

19 April 1999 -completed his own drift dive as a student at French Pass.
July 1999 -Professional Association of Dive Masters (PADI)
August 1999 -PADI Dive Instructor.
28 October 1999 -instructed his first drift dive, at French Pass. completed a further 4 or 5 instruction dives.
January 2000 -been awarded PADI Speciality Instructor Drift Diver.
10 March 2000 -fatal dive.

Note: He became Dive Instructor within 4 months (it can happen within 12 weeks).

The following interpretations are not concerned with instrumental issues regarding risk management within the dive industry, but rather the underlying educational issues associated with the provision and awarding of qualifications within the outdoor sector. This paper highlights how education reform over the past 15 years has made acceptable certain notions of experience, knowledge, assessment, and training, including the duration of an instructor course and the perception of the qualification or award. How outdoor educators regard such concepts may be reconsidered as a consequence. My analysis is structured around five questions out of which I will briefly discuss the assertions and assumptions contained within the judgement.

Awards and qualifications are necessary, but are they sufficient?
Judge Walker noted the following:

The 19 April dive at French Pass (where the employer - a Nelson Dive Centre (NDC) Director - and students, including the instructor, got into difficulties with the current) should have made the hazards obvious to the NDC and the instructor:

[Even a dive carefully planned by a person of his [the NDC Director’s] experience could go very wrong very quickly in that area [P54].

The 28 October dive at French Pass was not as dramatic as the April dive but again not without incident, and “the risks of being drawn into deeper water and dragged out of control were apparent to all participants” [P62]. Also;

A prudent dive instructor having inadvertently subjected his students to
unacceptable risk on 28 October 2000 (sic) would have avoided the site for a
drift dive during any state of tide. I can only conclude that Mr ...’s level of
experience as an instructor was not such as to enable him to identify the
unacceptable risk” [P64].

Part of the rationale for hiring someone may be that they have a recognised award
or qualification which indicates a desired level of technical competence, knowledge, and understanding, founded within the scope and philosophy of an award syllabus. Further observations of an instructor may help draw conclusions about these characteristics, but each of these are time specific. That is, an award today or surveillance tomorrow does not preclude the possibility of a mistake in judgement being made the following day. So how much surveillance of ‘qualified’ personnel is enough? What would be the systemic and financial consequences for an employer? The Judge’s comments place a question mark over the relevance and validity of the award. At the least, it stresses the dangers of holding an absolute belief in what the award enables the holder to do. However, I believe a strong argument could be made that the award is the industry accepted guideline regarding levels of surveillance in order for an instructor to do unsupervised
work. Employers may take further steps to observe practice before allowing the instructor to operate on their own, but the fact that this process is not necessary for self employed instructors indicates the intent of the award. The explicit assumption from the judge’s comment is that although the instructor had the internationally recognised award to do what he was doing, the employer should have realised he was not experienced enough to do what the award indicates he could do! This questions the validity of the award structure.

Knowledge and experience is necessary but is it sufficient?
The judge noted that the NDC Director allowed the instructor to undertake drift dive instruction at French Pass; without his knowing precisely where and without discussion with the instructor ... who was substantially less experienced than himself. Mr ... was
left to exercise his judgement ... in an area of substantial and known risks ... [and] displayed considerable lack of understanding of the level of risk ... All this demonstrated that he did not have the requisite level of knowledge, which would only be gained from experience of this particular location, to make an informed judgement ... What these decisions demonstrate is that Mr..., while apparently qualified, was in reality too inexperienced to take charge of the Defendant’s students. [P77-79]

This would indicate that the experience levels required (and recorded in a trainee’s and instructor’s logbook), and agreed upon as being at least the minimum to indicate a level of knowledge, skill and understanding to be granted the (inter)national award (in this case PADI), is not sufficient. Again, this questions the relevance and validity of the award structure, and could have significant consequences for the practice of employers regarding the necessity to provide ongoing supervision and training of award holders. Self-employed instructors would require an equally rigorous self-audit, which would have
similar consequences to their business procedures. There is little evidence to suggest such managerial systems do anything other than provide another layer of systems as opposed to producing the desired outcomes of the audit (Power, 1997; Strathern, 2000a).

An underlying concept of national or international awards (as opposed to local workplace or site specific awards), is that the holder of the award is able to apply the inherent skills and understandings to any setting or environment equivalent to the scope of the award. For example, a New Zealand Outdoor Instructors’ Association (NZOIA) Rock 1 award-holder should be able to ‘work at that level’ anywhere in New Zealand. That being so, it would appear the issue of knowledge and experience is directly related to the process of training as an instructor - in particular the length of time taken for that process. Current education processes, especially those relating to the National Qualifications Framework (NQF), show an acceptance of the idea that knowledge and experience are not necessarily connected to length of time, and that training and assessment of that training
can, and does, occur within the same day - sometimes within a period of two hours (Dumble, 2001).

The insistency of such reductive notions of what produces an outdoor leader or instructor is part of the neo-liberal discourse that has been transforming New Zealand since the mid 1980’s (Codd, 1999; Dumble, 1996; Peters & Roberts, 1999). What this means is that information in the form of skills, product, and performance are favoured at the expense of knowledge via insight, process, and understanding (Barnett, 1994). It is quicker to provide information. Within this regime it is possible for a student entering an instructor training course to move from zero status to instructor ‘hero’ status within a short period of time, whether it is scuba diving or any other outdoor pursuit activity. As an industry, how we regard the attractiveness of ‘teach ‘n’ test’ processes, and the associated
consequences has become a matter of concern, vital not only for employers and
their award holders, but also for educators.

How do the experiences of a student transform into requisite leader experience?
Mr ... could not be said to have been an experienced instructor. He had not been observed by the Defendant in that capacity. No assessment had therefore been made of his decision-making where safety of the students was at stake [P80].

What is the difference between the appropriateness of experience held by a student, and that of a new instructor or guide? What happens in that magic space of graduation - zero to hero with a handshake? In essence, a student completes the requirements of the syllabus, which usually includes having an agreed minimum level and range of experience. Once the student has been accepted into the assessment process, and is ‘passed’, the commonly accepted consequence is that the person has achieved a certain status that, along with other characteristics, make them employable. Passing an award such as PADI
Speciality Drift Dive Instructor indicates the ability to perform a job. Although other personal and vocational characteristics are of vital importance to an employer, this does not detract from the intent of the qualification. Again, this is explicit when we consider someone who is self-employed. That is, apart from diving occupations, the importance of the other characteristics concern only the instructor and the client, not a third party (in the case of diving, the Department of Labour). Let’s be honest, an (inter)national award provides a certain mana (status), which is quickly assimilated as a student moves from ‘trainee’ to ‘instructor’. By indicating a level of authority, value and knowledge, an award or qualification plays a key role in the production of the instructor.

The above statement by Judge Walker clearly calls into question the appropriateness of existing concepts of experience leading up to and including the assessment. There is also an implicit assumption that the philosophy and pedagogy of assessment is problematic. Again, I believe this is intimately linked to the length of time that a course runs. Reductive, narrowly focused ‘instructor’ courses lend themselves to an assessment process that attempts to objectively describe an inherently subjective process and being - the guide/teacher/instructor.

Some colleagues have suggested that by considering an instructor as an apprentice, some concerns would be overcome. The traditional apprenticeship system provided the employer with the opportunity of surveillance whilst the employee was training. In most trades, this process took many months or more likely, years. Once qualified, a future employer would not consider it necessary to surveil their new employee to anywhere near the same extent as someone unqualified. So regarding the qualified outdoor instructor as an apprentice does not resolve the issue. I believe the issue remains in the time taken to complete the training (or education) and that integral to this is the concept of experience. Perhaps in this context, the word ‘experience’ should be considered a verb - as in to gain experience. To gain experience requires time. The education of an outdoor
instructor of any ‘risky/adventurous’ activity is complex. The trend to focus on technical skill awards, (sometimes) wrapped in shallow educational management strategies and call it an outdoor qualification is problematic although not surprising. Adherence to such reductionism is consistent with a financial imperative which makes offering short technically-based courses enticing for the student and the provider (Dumble, 2001).

In the NDC case, a Dive Master associated with the accident, and who had trained with the NDC had incurred a ‘student loan’ of $13,000 - $14,000 to gain the Dive Master award. What used to be a recreational opportunity through traditional dive clubs, has now become accessible ‘adventure education’ for a student, even if the employment opportunities are limited and attached to a large personal debt. For the provider, becoming accredited through the New Zealand Qualifications Authority (NZQA) is equally rewarding. Work and Income New Zealand paid the cost of the course directly to the NDC, as the NDC was affiliated to a dive training provider which was accredited by NZQA (Clark, 2001). My argument is that in many cases, the rationale behind such courses is economic, not educational.

But more generally, education reform, especially since the second-term Labour Government of 1987, has catered for competitive corporate models with a preoccupation on costs, accountability, efficiency, contestability and compliance (Marginson, 1997; Irwin, 1998). Consequently, students have become consumers of a product, delivered by ‘providers’ - a teacher and teaching in a ‘traditional’ educational context, is no longer a prerequisite. In its drive to ‘open up’ education using production models, various governments have created the possibility of ‘factory instructors’.

Does an award indicate judgement and decision making abilities?
Do we have too much focus in training and assessment on technical ability, crisis management, and logistical planning, compared with decision-making and an ability to make judgements? Are our existing award processes a good indicator of judgement and decision-making? Judge Walker noted:

In the absence of certainty as to the judgement of Mr ... which could only have been possible after observation of his actions with students and with the passage of time, to allow him to choose at will a site in French Pass was to unjustifiably delegate responsibility for the students’ safety [P82].

An initial response is that in the process of attaining an award for pursuits such as scuba or rock climbing or kayaking, different levels and types of decision making and judgements have to be made. This is what assessors in all outdoor pursuits try to gauge when reading logbooks prior to the assessment process, and through observations during the assessment. Again, it could be argued that the intent of the award decrees the industry acceptable standard regarding judgement and decision making abilities. If so, Judge Walker’s comments above casts a shadow on the relevancy and validity of the assumptions surrounding judgement and decision making within the award structure. Furthermore, the judge clearly asserts here that it is ‘passage of time’ that creates judgement- making abilities. Of course this does not mean time spent any-old-how. It is
surely the pedagogical time during and after a formal course that will provide the possibility of the most desirable outcome. It is apparent here that the responsibility of the course providers is important, as they provide the identifiable vehicle for allowing key pedagogical processes to happen. However, this should not exclude the individual from the process - no matter how a course is structured, the abilities and qualities of the individual will always play a vital role.

Like many other occupations, the outdoor leader should take on the difficult art of being responsible for their own responsibility (Bauman & Tester, 2001). That is, there should be an ethical consideration played out by the instructor, rather than relying on material instruments such as a procedures manual or ‘being-told- what-to-do’. Such documents posit themselves between the moral self and its responsibility. Rather than the moral self being responsible for the ‘other’, it is responsible to a procedures manual. However, I argue that the process of being responsible to is part-and-parcel of how outdoor courses and instructors are produced within various normalised stories about what such courses and instructors are perceived to be (Dumble, 2001). The granting of a qualification or
award may intend to provide a sense of transparency to the competencies of the holder, but perhaps this is nothing more than a managerial practice of accountability, where the visible award becomes a perceived guarantee of competency (Codd, 1999; Fiske & Ladd, 2000; Strathern, 2000b). Of course the danger here, as highlighted throughout this case, is that an award or qualification will not guarantee against accidents. But it can provide a legitimate target against which you may be held accountable.

Do ‘manuals’ devolve responsibility to the individual instructor? It is not sufficient for the Defendant to say that Mr ... was required to carry out instruction in accordance with the PADI Manual. That manual requires sound judgement to be exercised by the instructor and Mr ... was not in fact capable of exercising that judgement ... Furthermore, the PADI Manual does not override the statutory duty imposed by the Act [P84].

For an employer and the self employed, I believe this stresses the importance of documents such as procedures manuals in two ways. First, with what they include regarding practices that ensure levels of safety relevant to the HSE Act - things that are becoming standard through the acceptance of certain notions of risk and safety management practices (and case law). For example hazard identification and management systems, incident reporting systems and detailing appropriate procedures when instructing or guiding clients. Some may also include company or industry codes of ethics, or codes of practice.

What procedures manuals don’t include are the second way I consider their importance. No matter what proforma or paperwork strategies are compiled that state the requirement of characteristics such as sound judgement and decision making, a manual cannot provide these characteristics. Again this reinforces the need for relevancy and validity of the award/qualification, and surveillance systems of an employer. Again, this is not particularly helpful when the instructor is self-employed. The implicit assumption in the judge’s comments is that manuals, as material instruments, are often regarded as a means of devolving responsibility in the sense that they cater for practices of pragmatic
accountability by way of the employer devolving responsibility to the employee. That is, they can have a lot to say about how things need to be done, but next to nothing about what ought to be done. The judgement indicates the dangers of adopting such an approach.

Discussion
This case is important in that it questions the relevancy and validity of outdoor qualifications and more importantly, technical awards through organisations such as PADI or NZOIA. It also highlights difficulties in the meanings of awards and qualifications when an instructor is self employed. Such instructors will be less able to have observation or mentoring systems in place than someone who is an employee within a larger business. In both situations, we have a ‘Catch 22’ viz: the award indicates that an agreed level of competency and experience in making judgements and decisions has been satisfactorily proven, and the judgement (on the other hand), clearly indicates that the PADI award does not accomplish this! The award may be necessary but is not sufficient in indicating experience and one’s ability to make judgements and decisions about potential dangers.

In this case, the judgement relates to scuba diving and the requirement by the Department of Labour for dive instructors to hold a Certificate of Competency. I believe there are parallels between PADI Dive Instructor and other outdoor instructing awards, and the conclusions drawn by Judge Walker are powerful enough to initiate the questioning of potential consequences to outdoor awards in general. The five questions discussed relate to the consideration of “all practicable steps” under the first charge. As this consideration is pertinent to any place or type of work, it makes the issue of the Certificate of Competency, although interesting, less specifically important. As a process of audit, it can be argued the Certificate of Competency is merely another layer of accountability beyond the qualification label - one that prescribes power to the accrediting authority. The supposed transparency resulting from the requirement of the Certificate of Competency is intended to indicate some level of integrity but such a process does not necessarily guarantee competency and sound judgement or decision-
making (Power, 1997; Strathern, 2000a).

As frequently highlighted, a major concern with the qualification is the length of time taken to gain experience and how this relates to judgement and decision- making abilities. Under the NQF, Industry Training Organisations consider experience as being adequate if it is successfully assessed. The concept of gaining experience over time has not been regarded as necessary. This is indicated by the absence of a requirement to keep log books, a concept regarded as very important with other pursuit award organisations such as NZOIA. However, I hasten to mention the consequences of automatically equating a log book to sound judgement and decision-making! The short duration of many courses contributes to this dilemma of how best to instill the complex attributes of judgement and decision-making. It is not uncommon for dive instructors to be certified within 12 weeks of commencing their training. In contrast, a mountain climbing guide will take a minimum of five years/seasons to gain their award from the New Zealand Mountain Guides Association, an award that legitimates the holder to guide
clients in similarly dynamic environments.

Outdoor courses offering the National Certificate in Outdoor Recreation Instruction are being coordinated over 44 weeks. Some ‘local’ courses take 64 weeks and include two summer work opportunities in an attempt to provide students with enough pedagogical time to become sound outdoor leaders. Although the ‘graduate profile’ of a new dive instructor may differ from someone completing a 64 week Diploma, both graduates may easily find themselves doing similar work - instructing, teaching or leading clients in an outdoor pursuit. How is it possible for one sector of the industry to deem 12 weeks as adequate to ‘train’ instructors, while another sector considers 64 weeks is required. My
contention is that the shorter the course, the less likely the student is to be able to demonstrate sound judgement and decision making for no other reason than they will not have appropriate time to gain sufficient experience in an instructor or teaching setting. The political and economic desire for such reductive notions of education and training positions the graduates of short courses as ‘objects’. That is, although they have the responsibility of being responsible, they have been produced as inexperienced by the very nature of the course, the teaching staff (but especially the designer of the curriculum) and the accrediting agencies (in this case PADI, the Dive ITO, and NZQA).

Perhaps part of the issue highlighted by this case study lies in the perceived difference between ‘awards’ and ‘qualifications’, and ‘education’ and ‘training’? Or more accurately, in the current interchangeable nature of these words. The NQF - the ‘supermarket’ where all the units of knowledge are stored, supports a desire for a measurable fragmentation of knowledge by disseminating the notion that unit standards are qualifications. There is a growing importance placed on the value of such fragmented knowledge, as made apparent when Bill Lennox,

Communications Manager at the NZQA stated that unit standards are “often seen as mini-qualifications in themselves” (Lennox, 2000). Likewise, education reform over the last 15 years has changed foundational theories on what counts as knowledge. It has moved away from knowledge as process, to the commodification of knowledge based in economic theory (Codd, 1997). This is made obvious in the recent promulgation of the ‘knowledge-based economy’, even if the present government prefers to use the words ‘knowledge-based society’. The dominant ideology views the academic and the vocational as no longer being distinct with no difference being drawn between education and training (Blackmuir, 1997).

Personally, I differentiate between such concepts and locate training and awards firmly within technical or ‘operational’ competency structures - structures predicated on and performance based within an economic view of the world (Barnett, 1994). Although a qualification may include technical skills and awards, I think it also includes pedagogical content knowledge, knowledges concerning people (e.g. values, society, culture, ethics, politics), and other less obviously connected knowledges ‘built around a student’s mastery within a discipline’ (Barnett, 1994, p.159). Although qualifications such as PADI awards may be considered as the culminating ‘label’ attached to the education process, it is the process that is the key differential - a process which takes time to internalise the
aspects of higher learning within broader concepts of outdoor leadership. I suggest outdoor pursuit awards, just as a dive master or dive instructor award, do not share such characteristics of a qualification.

Overview
The reductive nature of outdoor pursuit awards, legitimated through current notions of easily accessed but competitive ‘education’ courses, lend themselves to the development of ‘factory instructors’. Through this case study, I have argued that the intent and content of the syllabus, the philosophy of assessment and teaching, and the ‘passage of time’ taken to become an instructor, play vital roles in how we perceive what an award or qualification enables such instructors to do. Specifically, it calls into question the perception of experience, judgement, and decision making abilities of ‘qualified’ instructors. To avoid the limitations associated with the notion of ‘zero to hero’, it is timely for these processes to be closely examined by the outdoor community, staff of outdoor courses, and relevant government agencies such as Occupational Safety and Health, the
Maritime Safety Authority, and the accrediting body, NZQA. Although the individual instructor has an important role in how they regard their own responsibility, it is equally important to recognise that the instructor is being produced through existing perceptions of what appropriate leadership training or education is supposedly about.

Acknowledgements
I would like to acknowledge the critical feedback from colleagues in the Department of Sport and Leisure, University of Waikato, especially Dr Bevan Grant. Likewise for the ruminations from Mark Jones, Auckland University of Technology. New York .

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