A plea to driving instructor associations

Making the learning process for a pupil ‘meaningful’ is the hallmark of a professional driving instructor.  This phrase of ‘meaningful learning’ keeps coming into my radar from the DVSA of late.  To demonstrate what this actually means, I will describe what is happening with a pupil that is currently with me.

She has done 13 hours with a different driving instructor but has lost her way with him because he was doing mock tests with her but was talking of her driving test being in “August or September”.  That might be acceptable to some, but for this lass, 3 months delay was simply not acceptable.  I don’t know the instructor she was referring to, I have no idea at all about the accuracy of the situation and can only go with the account of the pupil. 

What I observed when this pupil showed me her driving was the product of what I refer to as ineffective instruction.  Mirror checks were inconsistent and lacked any logical methodology.  Blindspots checks sometimes happened, but more often were non-existent.  There was no evidence of the necessary sowing of seeds of good driving habits.  The pupil was constantly needing confirmation of where to go, pointing to a junction asking “What….. this one here?”.  She had no concept about the relationship between speed and gears; a telltale sign of this fact is when a pupil forces the gear lever into 2^nd when approaching at about 40mph for a roundabout on a faster moving road.  When she made mistakes like driving up the kerb on the left, speeding, stalling, or emerging when she shouldn’t, her comments of frustration were based around how these always happened and why there was always a reason for it happening – in other words, there was a disconnect between the driving behaviour and her; she did not ‘own’ her actions.

This pupil has now been exposed to 8 hours of driving training with me.  She has been given the opportunity to consider aspects of driving that tap into the upper 2 tiers of the GDE matrix – with mixed engagement if I’m being quite honest about it.  I think it fair to say that every comment or question that comes out of her mouth is “driving test” related.  Her thoughts are utterly consumed with the driving test.   She openly says to me that the ultimate possibility of obtaining the full driving licence is so great and desirable that she just cannot get it out of her head.

She has not been offered the opportunity previously to consider what “good driving” means to her or where her ability and confidence fit into being a safe and responsible driver.  These thoughts are alien to her.  She has been focussed entirely on “Tell me what you want me to do so I can pass the test”.  And this is the really important bit in this blog – no-one should be placing any ‘blame’ on pupils who have this narrow view about what learning to drive entails.  Pupils come into this learning process with a variety of different experiences of what learning means to them.  My 15 year old son explained to me the other day, quite out of the blue, and in his own terminology, how he felt the English teachers were in effect spoon-feeding the pupils to pass the English exams.  This is of course no surprise to me as my other son was telling me in primary school how a teacher hovered over him while taking an exam, and said “I think you might want to think about that again” whilst pointing to a particular answer.  Our education system has become over the decades so obsessed with exam grades that the meaningfulness of “learning” has got lost in the process.  You have to feel for the teachers that see this happening in slow motion and constantly question if this is what they came into the industry for.

Why is this important to recognise? 

This over emphasis on grades is placing an incredible strain on our teenagers.  It affects confidence, self-worth and it ignores the fact that people do need to feel like they are being fulfilled while in the process of their education years.  Coming out of the process feeling a failure, feeling like you have let yourself and your family down is not good….. this is the stuff of no eye contact, low activity levels, little ability to string sentences together to express how you feel.  And this non-engagement of a meaningful learning environment also does little for helping them to develop key life skills about self-development in social, business, family relationships.  It is the ability to nurture relationships that makes for happiness rather than achieving a Grade C over a Grade D. 

But how this affects us as driving instructors is also not insignificant.  We have customers who have become used to being spoon-fed, they have become used to a learning environment centred around a lack of responsibility for the effectiveness of the process – they have become used to the setting of expectations of “just scraping through”.  But worst of all, there is little connection between ‘cause and effect’, after all if you don’t own a process, you have little control over the outcome.  The result is that the non-academic of us (in which I firmly place myself) are left to languish in feelings of low self-worth where they can only stare in awe at the “self-assured”. 

When a driving instructor falls into the trap of spoon-feeding their pupils, all they do is further exacerbate this problem.  We have literally thousands of newly qualified drivers with very little confidence in their driving ability who have been coached to pass driving tests.  So bad is the situation now that the ONLY way in which they can afford to get insured is for them to have black box telematics fitted, so that the continued “compliance” is forced upon them.  Their driving behaviours are being controlled (with varying success) by enforced supervision from insurance companies rather than tapping into their inner most thoughts, feelings and beliefs.  Oh dear, what a sad state of affairs we are in.

What we need at the very least is for professionals in the industry who are prepared to embrace and comply with the DVSA driving standards to start creating a pressure within the driving training industry on the professionals who are choosing to ignore the DVSA.  This is where I personally would like to the see driving associations step up to the plate.  These associations apparently have the best interests of their members in mind, and if that is the case, then they should be leading the way in modelling good practice.  I see very little of this in my interactions with them.  I hear a lot of excuses and historical context given, but I don’t see or hear any pressure being exerted.  These organisations owe it to their members to become more accepting of the explicit guidance given by the DVSA and be actively seen to not defend members who continue to provide “Mum and Dad” style driving instruction.  Compliance led driving training does little to contribute towards long term road safety, it does not serve customers well, it ignores the guidance of our driving authority the DVSA and yet it is ignored like the plague.  My wish would be that it is openly confronted, exposed, and this unprofessional, lazy form of training is openly shown to be what it is….. ineffective.

http://drivinginstructortraining.bigtom.org.uk/