What is the Importance of Dive Theory to an IDC Candidate?

Dive Theory is one of the most important aspects of becoming an Open Water Scuba Instructor that many Instructor Candidates forget to focus on.

Physics, Physiology, Equipment, Skills, and Environment and the Recreational Dive Planner. It's important to remember that all these theoretical topics have previously been covered in the Divemaster program, and as such, it is assumed you enter the IDC with that knowledge.

Why is Dive Theory Important?

It is simple if your students have never read or do not understand the basic information on how scuba diving works, they will struggle throughout their time as a diver. The importance of dive theory cannot be understated; why you may ask? As an Instructor Candidate, it is your job to pass on your knowledge and experience to your students; an Instructor Candidate can only accomplish this with excellent communication between themselves and their students. Dive theory has three main components that in the end make up our sport: physics, physiology, and psychology.

For those aspiring to become scuba instructors, dive theory will most likely be the most challenging part of the Instructor Development Course (IDC) that you will have to undertake. It requires you to go into a whole lot of extremely specific and detailed information about dive physics, physiology, gear, etc., as these topics are all surprisingly very vital for every single diver.

How does Open Water Scuba Instructor use Dive Theory in the Real World?

Dive Instructors use Dive Theory to pass on their knowledge and experience to their students. The most important part of dive theory is communication between Instructor and their students. By helping their students understand the basic theory of diving, Instructors can make sure that their students are safe and prepared for every scuba diving adventure.

A full comprehension of dive theory will help student divers to better grasp the subaquatic setting and minimize the fear element. A dive instructor answering his/her students’ questions builds a student's confidence in his/her instructor.

How do Open Water Scuba Instructor Learn Dive Theory?

The theory is the portion of the instructor exam when Instructor Candidates have the most difficulty and are most likely to fail. This is because the theory is the area that the instructor candidate underestimates and fails to put enough time into studying for. Dive theory is a combination of everything that the instructor candidate has already learned during their open water, advanced, rescue and divemaster courses, but this requires refreshing.

Candidates have three main sources to refer from; their books and other training materials from all their courses completed so far, the Encyclopedia of Recreational Diving from their Divemaster course, and Dive Theory online from PADI. But this is a lot of material, so it is suggested to learn by the book by utilising the Diving Knowledge Workbook from their IDC crew pack to identify where in Dive Theory they are lacking.

Use the 'Diving Knowledge Workbook' by answering the questions, section by section. Then reflexively research the answers to the questions answered wrongly, followed by redoing all the questions for that section in the workbook. Repeat the process until you get all the answers correct for one section before continuing to the next section.

As part of the IDC process, your PADI Course Director will review theory, but it is important that you have done your pre-study so that the Course Director can spend his or her time working on your teaching skills and not reviewing theory 

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