This is an old article. DSA is now DVSA, of course.
UPDATE: The DSA has now embarked on its implementation of coaching, so read this article posted in November 2012.
The forums have been aglow over recent months on the subject of coaching. It’s quite funny how people think just substituting a word in their waffle suddenly makes them brilliant coaches. Suddenly “I teach people to drive” has become “I coach people to drive”. The irony is that many of them probably don’t do either very well, but it doesn’t stop them using the “C” word in every other sentence.
Some of them might actually be coaching very well, but for most I doubt that they’d recognise coaching if it came and cocked its leg against them.
If anyone asks me what I do, I tell them:
- I’m a driving instructor
- I teach people to drive
I refuse point blank to use the C word. I had a skinful of it when I was working in the rat race, and it makes my skin crawl now when I hear it. But am I right to feel that way?
A huge part of the problem seems to be that the same kind of people who used to make me hurl when I was in the rat race have started hijacking the coaching issue as it pertains to driving instruction. To that end, they are running around telling everyone what coaching is and what it involves:
- communication skills
- interpersonal skills
- building relationships
- create connections
- psychological techniques
- promoting change
- expand contacts
- clean language
- emergent knowledge
- unconscious resources
- negative/positive self-belief
- personality types
- life coaching
- performance coaching
- self-marketing
- body language
- inner confidence
This just goes on and on, depending on who you listen to. Phrases like inner confidence and life coaching make me shudder. They’re pure bullshit.
EDIT 24/7/2012: I just want to add something I read recently where a trainer claims – in answer to the question about how to develop a lesson structure – that the following are essential for assessing how a pupil learns:
- V.A.K.
- Behaviourism i.e. Classical Conditioning
- Constructivism – Piaget, Vygotsky
- Humanism – Hierarchy of needs (Maslow)
- Kolbs learning cycle
- Co-operative learning
- Cognitive acceleration
I’ve mentioned the rat race a few times. This is exactly the kind of total and utter bullshit we had to deal with. And make no mistake about it – that’s exactly what it is. It’s the equivalent of charging people to breath air. When someone starts spouting this nonsense, their true colours are suddenly and painfully exposed.
The person who quoted these cannot give any real world examples of their use. and application. Merely listing them is supposed to initiate the sharp intake of admiring breaths from those who read it. Or not, as the case may be.
The DSA hasn’t actually said what it expects by way of coaching, and all these ADIs who are allegedly “doing it all the time” – even when they’re in a coma – seem very reluctant to give examples of precisely how they coach when pressed to do so. The reason for that is simple: they haven’t got a clue what coaching is.
They also forget that the DSA is going to take the most direct route possible, and it isn’t likely to require ADIS to gain aromatherapy and crystallography diplomas from the local Clown College in order to remain on the register.
It goes without saying that the GDE Matrix is involved in this – purely because the Clown College life skills department has got hold of it, looked at the table in the back, and seen a way of making shedloads of money out of it. it. But does the Matrix actually agree with those Cuckoo Club Coaches, who seem to believe that levitation, time-travel, and healing hands are mandatory skills for someone who teaches – sorry, coaches – people to drive?
Well, the GDE Matrix Report everyone is referring to (download it by clicking the links above) says that driver behaviour follows this “hierarchical model” – or in plain English, when someone goes out driving their overall performance is governed by these things in order:
- car control ability (speed, direction, position, etc.)
- handling real situations (junctions, other cars, etc.)
- purpose and nature of the journey
- general attitudes towards driving and life in general
Just about any ADI will be handling the first three with every pupil they teach. If they aren’t, they shouldn’t be on the Register. We teach them how to handle the car, how to handle road layouts and various traffic conditions, and things which might cause distraction or increase the risk of an accident. Any ADI who isn’t covering these things simply isn’t doing their job properly.
Addressing the 4th item is the one which apparently needs a Clown College diploma in something which mankind has not managed to solve in all of recorded history, and which it is unlikely to solve anytime in the future. In plain English, it is the way the average person behaves generally in their life, and how this carries over into how he or she drives.
As an example, if you have someone who spent their entire time at school pretending to be black in spite of being a pasty white colour (i.e. wearing a stupid baseball cap), plus a shell suit or Burberry clobber, cheap bling, BMX bike, no taste in music, their whole evenings hanging around outside the chip shop smoking, spitting, and swearing at people who walk past, and who was known to the police from about 10 minutes after he was born because of who his parents were, well, that person just might be tempted to drive in an inappropriate manner when he passes his test and buys a Corsa with 4-inch exhaust pipe and blacked out windows. His whole life to that point has conditioned him.
[Some idiot from Manchester has taken issue with this analogy, and thinks it is offensive to black people. It’s supposed to be a swipe at young white people! Slightly built, pasty white youths who dress like rap stars and have rubbish music blaring out of their stereos and who behave antisocially are already a long way away from likely being influenced by a bit of coaching from an instructor. Anyone who has to pretend to be something they aren’t (hence, a white person pretending to be black, when the cap just doesn’t fit) has already got issues. And like it or not, they exist in large numbers out there, which is why I used this example.]Doesn’t that make you slap your head and go “Of course! It all makes sense now!”
But it gets better, because apparently the one thing that’s been missing from the equation – and which could prevent this unfortunate situation arising – is the role of the Driving Instructor!
Let’s get rid of the Clown College mystique a moment and remind ourselves that “GDE” stands for Goals for Driver Education. The following table is what many people refer to as “The GDE Matrix” or, as it calls itself, “The GDE Framework”. It is basically just a more complicated version of the 4 items listed above, using university-speak to make itself look important. Oh, yes! And it’s upside-down.
| Knowledge and Skill | Risk Increasing Aspects | Self-assessment | |
| Goals for life, skills for driving | Lifestyle, age, group norms, motives, self-control, values | Sensation seeking, group norms, complying with peer pressure | Risky tendencies, own preconditions, impulse control |
| Goals and context of driving | Modal choice, choice of time, trip goals, social pressure | Alcohol, fatigue, purpose of driving, rush hours, competing | Planning skills, typical goals, typical risky motives |
| Traffic situations | Traffic rules, observation, driving path, communication | Disobeying rules, information overload, unsuitable speed | Awareness of personal strengths and weaknesses |
| Vehicle manoeuvring | Control of direction, position, tyre grip, physical laws | Unsuitable speed, insufficient automatism, difficult conditions | Calibration and awareness of car control skill |
A typical young driver who is being taught properly – and that isn’t just by his ADI, but through his schooling and via his parents and friends – will gradually progress across this, starting at the bottom left and finishing top right, but taking in all the other things along the way. Remember that at this stage of the report, all that this table is doing is telling you how someone who is being taught properly learns. It’s telling you something most people already know but which they never had to think about. It’s really just stating the obvious.
The report then goes on to make some recommendations:
An Integrated Driver Education Approach (IDEA) is recommended, where structured professional methods are combined with accompanied practicing.
Translation: We suggest that people should be taught by driving instructors and also get private practice to supplement what they are taught.
Training should start in a structured way from the lowest levels of the driving hierarchy and then continue to allow drivers to learn these skills automatic with an accompanying person.
Translation: We suggest that training should start with the basics, and then people can practice these basics privately with an accompanying driver.
Integrated approach is especially important for the youngest learner drivers before allowing them independent access to traffic.
Translation: Young drivers are at greatest risk.
Integrated approach increases the demands for professional instructors and thus, training of traffic instructors should be improved.
This is where it starts to get scary – and it’s the one the Clown College graduates have gotten hold of. It goes on:
- Knowledge on motivational and social aspects of driving (not only technical skill)
- Skills for dealing with lay-supervisors
- Guiding lay-supervisors in efficient teaching
Translation: Driving Instructors should involve the supervising drivers.
Accompanied driving should include a minimum amount of driving and also a structure and methods to control it.
Translation: Private practice shouldn’t be pointless and allow bad habits to develop.
Interventions of professionals after the accompanied driving phase should support risk awareness and self-evaluation, rather than being technically oriented.
Translation: It’s attitude that leads to accidents.
The process of the integrated driver education approach does not necessarily have to exceed two years for example.
This is where that media story which has taken various forms over the last 5 years about the minimum driving age being raised came from.
Professional driver education should be available to persons who do not have the possibility to follow the integrated approach.
Translation: If someone can’t do private practice, ignore all the stuff we just said and just take lessons with an instructor.
Giving more structure to the training could effectively reduce unnecessary examinations.
Translation: Better training might result in better pass rates.
Although it comes close to the subject – worryingly close if you don’t understand it – it definitely stops short of suggesting that driving instructors should aim to repair inadequate parenting or schooling by turning hooligans into saints.
In fact, the only things the definitive GDE Matrix report does say are just blindingly obvious! It makes it sound all high-falutin’, but it is just stating the obvious.
The DSA is currently running a Learning To Drive study, where they are trialing a new syllabus for possible implementation in the next few years. Undoubtedly there will be some elements of coaching in it, but I suspect the main thrust will be the content. It isn’t going to require that instructors become psychoanalysts – that’s just the stupid interpretation that some have given to the GDE Matrix table.
Like most things in this industry, what some ADIs believe (or want to believe) will be light years away from what really happens.
In the meantime, the Life Coaches are having a ball persuading vulnerable instructors to attend pointless and expensive Clown courses.