Introduction
What you may ask is ADI DIRT. Is it something sinister or is it something benign. DIRT in the educational world is Dedicated Improvement and Reflection Time. Back in August 2023 I covered using reflection which I now want to revisit but from a different perspective. We are now going to look at how we ourselves can improve.
Consider how many hours it takes to train a pupil to drive. GOV.UK Ready To Pass? has this as an average 45 hours plus 22 hours private practice. This equates to nearly 70 hours behind the wheel of a car. Contrast this with how long it takes to train an ADI.
The legal minimum practical in-car training is 15 hours and I know that any decent trainer will be offering a lot more than this. Is 15 hours 1-2-1 enough to train a learner so why is that acceptable for an ADI. You might say that a learner does not need any training from an ADI but I bet that they will need a lot of time in-car to stand any chance of passing.
But is all the extra classroom enough to make a decent instructor. After you have passed your Part 3 any CPD is voluntary. If you were driving lorries or buses CPD (or CPC as they call it) would be compulsory and you would have to cover recognised subjects.
If there is no legal requirement for extra training after you have your Part 3, how many will take extra training. If you are reading this my guess is that you are committed to further training. If you are an ADINJC member or a member of a local association you are committed to extra training. But how many are not.
360-degree Feedback
What is meant by this. Some of you will have come across it but what does it mean. It is sometimes called multi-rater feedback which means that there is more than one source. It can be feedback from above which is your supervisors, below which might be your customers and from the side this being your fellow team members. Or put another way: supervisory, subordinate and lateral.
How can we use this for driving instruction. Is this good DIRT?
Supervisory
For us, our ultimate supervisors are the DVSA. They have a number of ways of doing this. Trigger Points, Standards Checks and the Enforcement Teams.
Firstly there are trigger points which look at the performance of your pupils on tests. I believe but cannot state with certainty that besides using your PRN number they will also check against the registration number of your vehicle if the ADI badge is left out. Feel free to comment on the ADINJC Facebook Group page about this. I’m happy to learn more.
You can of course be subject to a Standards Check (SC). If your trigger points are not what is desirable you will jump the queue for a SC. So long as everything is going well you will be waiting and waiting quite a long time before your SC. The SC is no longer done every four years or less. I’m guessing it’s when they think you need one. Currently lots of my colleagues are six, seven, eight years without a SC. The chair of our local association has never had one.
The senior examiners who conduct these tests are given six weeks training to prepare for them. So you will get good feedback from a well trained professional.
As part of your SC you should ask for your record of test results. I expect but don’t know for certain that even if you have not looked at this, your SC examiner will have. Again feel free to comment on our ADINJC group FB page.
Better still you don’t even have to be subject to a SC you can just ask for your results. Use this link Your test data. How your pupils perform on test should be absolute gold for you, make the most of it. Don’t be a queue jumper when it comes to your SC.
With your test data don’t fall for the rubbish of so and so doesn’t count because I told them they were not ready but they wanted to take it anyway or any of the other excuses. They all count and by presenting a pupil for the test you are saying they are ready to pass the test and safe on the road on their own. It’s your professional reputation that you are putting on the line. Your pass rate is one of the things the DVSA will be judging you on.
If your trigger points are generated by the performance of your pupils on their driving tests. DVSA Enforcement will be generated actively by some kind of complaint. If it’s an anonymous complaint there is no action but it is intelligence. For a formal complaint someone has to put their name to it.
Subordinate
This is what your pupils think of you and can be expressed in different ways. The normal way that most instructors like, is to be recommended. Your personal reputation will be what puts bread on the table.
Start shouting at the pupils or behaving inappropriately and instead of bread you will have to eat some green kryptonite which is definitely bad for you. At this point you need to think seriously about what and how you are doing things.
Next way pupils express their thoughts about you is by reviews. If you have no other way of choosing an instructor, one with lots of 5 Star reviews is a way to go. Most pupils when passing will promise but not all will deliver, it’s just part of the game.
Even a bad review should be taken seriously and responded to. This could be by admitting that they had a point and doing something about it. Another could be by providing a robust response. Either way, think carefully and remember that the pupil has gone out of their way to do this.
Next way of getting feedback is by asking the pupils directly. The fact you’re asking is showing the pupil you are taking them seriously. Be prepared for them to tell you. Take what they say seriously. Being told to talk less is one I’ve heard before about myself.
It goes without saying you should be observing your pupils as feedback could be in their body language. Really it’s about noticing your pupil and then helping them to achieve.
Lateral
This is the interesting one. The DVSA has a legal role in our regulation and does that quite passively by monitoring our driving test stats and where appropriate providing a SC. It will react appropriately to complaints.
The pupils will give feedback in various ways. Passively during a lesson in terms of how they react to you. Actively by recommendation and the posting of reviews.
The nature of driving instruction is that we work alone with our pupils. You might form an opinion about other instructors but it will be only hearsay from other pupils or possibly by what they might say at the test centre. And those that would benefit most from some honest feedback from their fellow instructors are the least likely to ask.
So for us our lateral feedback must be self generated and this is where DIRT comes into its own.
If you are feeling bold ask your pupil to reflect on your performance and give you the appropriate feedback. This might give some interesting comments and in the spirit of DIRT you would use that to improve. Remember you could just start off with one aspect of what you do.
A common one here will be they might want more time driving in test areas. The range of replies here will depend on a number of different things. Question them and drill down and it will reveal stuff you can use. My way of dealing with that particular gem is to tell them that they need to be able to deal with situations rather than places.
Why not get the pupils to scale you either for the lesson or part of, like a briefing. You might be scaling them to see what they know and understand about something. If you got them to scale you on how you do things that could be interesting. They are after all they are paying for your services and the real bonus here is that they would be constantly affirming that you are a good instructor.
An example here is that I like to use the phrase “drill down”. During a lesson with a rather attractive lady I found myself saying “I would be drilling her” when talking about her use of mirrors. She pretended not to notice and as fortunately the rest of what I did was professional, I probably dodged a bullet from the DVSA Enforcement Team with that one. DIRT saved me from saying that one to a pupil ever again.
A few lessons later when driving along I repaid the favour. When referring to the gears, she asked if I wanted her to go down, I said nothing and again both of us carried on if nothing had happened. But OMG did my tongue hurt. Unsurprisingly she never said that again in that particular way either.
Slip of the tongue or Freudian slips, either way use of DIRT takes your errors on board and hopefully they never happen again.
© Liam Greaney
driving-pro.com
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