Assessing the Merits of an Instructor

[PeteG]

Here’s an idea of how the capability of a firearms instructor should be measured (note I said “should be,” “could be” is another matter):

The effectiveness of a firearms instructor (sometimes stated in terms of “ability”) is properly measured only as the average net improvement in the skills, abilities and understanding of the students, per unit of instruction, assessed at the end of the course.

The job is to improve the skills and abilities (including mental abilities) of the students, either generally or with respect to some specific skill. Effectiveness must therefore be measured by the improvement of the students.

Effectiveness is therfore not rationally measured in terms of what the instructor himself can do, or once did, or looks like he can do. The object of instruction is, in the end, to improve he who is being instructed.

It must be an average of the net improvement across all students, because the intelligence, attitude and motivation of students varies. There are bone-heads or people who just don't care to learn, and the instructor cannot be blamed for someone elses' bad attitude. There are also students who are bright enough and motivated enough to learn well in spite of poor instruction. By averaging one can find the instructor who gets the most improvement out of the most of his students.

This must be measured at the end of each course, because after the course some students practice and continue to develop, and some do not, and their skills deteriorate. The instructor has very limited influence upon this factor.

I do not include concerns of safety, whether the course is painful or enjoyable, or the quality of what is being taught in the definition of effectiveness. Safety and whether a course should be enjoyable are value judgments; more information may be imparted in a shorter time if things like pain penalties are introduced, and the safety of the students is not a consideration. The quality of what is being taught only reflects upon the instructor if it is defined by the instructor (which is often, but not always, the case).

Now come the value judgments.

For the kind of work I do (which I believe is the kind of training applicable to all or very nearly all who read this board), both safety and the amount of pain people must endure to complete a course are considerations. Safety is a moral issue to me; I suspect the motivation and emotional stability of people who are not concerned with safety in any form of training; and in any case the people with whom I work virtually always place a high priority on safety.

I also believe that people learn better if they are relaxed and unafraid, as opposed to being motivated by fear, hatred or a sick affinity for pain and humiliation. At the same time, nothing is accomplished wihout work, and some people don't like work. There is always some discomfort when people are asked to do things they are not yet good at.

Given this set of value judgments, people who share these values should rate the merits of an instructor according to:

(1) Net improvement in the skills, abilities and understanding of the students, per unit of instruction, assessed at the end of the course; in light of

(2) Whether designated safety protocols satisfactory to the students are maintained throughout the course; and

(3) Whether his courses are conducted such that, at a minimum, there is not so much pain students are distracted from the educational mission.

The catch to all this is that if the course material is inherently ineffective, the course will be worthless regardless of the instructor. If the instructor teaches nonsense very well, it’s still nonsense. This is not the instructor’s fault, unless the instructor picked the course material. I have to conclude that what an instructor teaches - program content - is a factor which will outwegh anything else in the selection of a course.

[Kaos]

Good read as always Pete. I don't post much here anymore but it's always a pleasure to see quality info like this when I do make it here.

[PeteG]

Good read as always Pete. I don't post much here anymore but it's always a pleasure to see quality info like this when I do make it here.

Thank you.

Recognize, of course, this is not information so much as opinion. I'm working on an article, and I want to see if there are any "holes" in my logic.

[Carnes]

Recognize, of course, this is not information so much as opinion. I'm working on an article, and I want to see if there are any "holes" in my logic.

Sounds interesting, I like these kinds of exercises. I'll rspond to the OP here in terms of 'thinking out loud' (as opposed to general criticism).

Here’s an idea of how the capability of a firearms instructor should be measured (note I said “should be,” “could be” is another matter):

The effectiveness of a firearms instructor (sometimes stated in terms of “ability”) is properly measured only as the average net improvement in the skills, abilities and understanding of the students, per unit of instruction, assessed at the end of the course.

On one hand this concept sounds genius, but on the other it is tautological, and as such not necessarily valuable. For example, if I am reading an article about being a better business leader, defining a good business leader as someone that causes an organization to be more profitable when he leaves than when he showed up, is not going to give me any valuable insight on what it takes to be a good leader.

I think that using 'results' as the ultimate metric for judging an instructor is something that 'should' pretty much be taken for granted. If the training community doesn't get that yet, then the concept for your article could be revolutionary. But, for me personally, I would be more interested in delving deeper into specific instructior qualities and how they interact in a dynamic training environment.

The job is to improve the skills and abilities (including mental abilities) of the students, either generally or with respect to some specific skill. Effectiveness must therefore be measured by the improvement of the students.

Effectiveness is therfore not rationally measured in terms of what the instructor himself can do, or once did, or looks like he can do. The object of instruction is, in the end, to improve he who is being instructed.

It must be an average of the net improvement across all students, because the intelligence, attitude and motivation of students varies. There are bone-heads or people who just don't care to learn, and the instructor cannot be blamed for someone elses' bad attitude. There are also students who are bright enough and motivated enough to learn well in spite of poor instruction. By averaging one can find the instructor who gets the most improvement out of the most of his students.

This must be measured at the end of each course, because after the course some students practice and continue to develop, and some do not, and their skills deteriorate. The instructor has very limited influence upon this factor.

I agree completely. One of the first things that comes to my mind is, 'how is improvement measured?' Most classes are currently so broadly defined that meaningful measurement could be problematic. Measuring something as broad as 'basic handgun' is going to be a lot more challenging (and open to subjective bias) than measuring something like, 'threat/no-threat target discrimination in the home.'

If the students, on average, are 'better' at the end of the day, that is going
to indicate quality instruction, but defining 'better' can be a tough nut to crack.

One thing to consider is how much 'better' is necessary to indicate meaningful improvment. If we are going to start quantifing 'better' it might be a good idea to measure the average of a 'control group' that practices shooting over a 2-3 day period, 6-8 hrs a day without any formal instruction. Given that humans are adaptable and typically more intelligent than the average slug, I suspect that people will improve to some extent. Once the extent to which people improve, in a group independent of formal training, is established, then that sets a meaningful baseline for how valuable the efforts of a specific instructor are.

That would be a really cool objective for the 'R' part of the F.I.R.E. Institute.

I do not include concerns of safety, whether the course is painful or enjoyable, or the quality of what is being taught in the definition of effectiveness. Safety and whether a course should be enjoyable are value judgments; more information may be imparted in a shorter time if things like pain penalties are introduced, and the safety of the students is not a consideration. The quality of what is being taught only reflects upon the instructor if it is defined by the instructor (which is often, but not always, the case).

I appreciate your position. I look forward to when you do an analysis of how certain factors interact with others in the training enironment. Sure, it's a values judgment, but certin approaches will tend to yield specific results in relation to the relevant teaching methods/characteristics. For example, highly motivated students are going to respond differently (better) to pain penalties, and student motivation is going to be directly related to the amount of confidence the students have in the instructor. Things like that can be written off as values judgments, but alternatively they can be powerful tools in developing onesself as a higher quality trainer.

Now come the value judgments.

For the kind of work I do (which I believe is the kind of training applicable to all or very nearly all who read this board), both safety and the amount of pain people must endure to complete a course are considerations. Safety is a moral issue to me; I suspect the motivation and emotional stability of people who are not concerned with safety in any form of training; and in any case the people with whom I work virtually always place a high priority on safety.

So, how can we meaningfully analyze the dynamics involved? If you establish a baseline for pre-class to post-class improvment, then factors such as the 'audience' (ie regular guy vs HSLD), safety standards, pain, motivation, $$$ cost and other such things are going to be likely to significantly influence the net gain in overall average student improvement.

What about other factors? My last sentence-paragraph reminds me of how important communication skills are. In text, talking to an educated individual, I know I can express complex ideas compacted into a single long sentence, and when teaching a class I know similar communication can be a huge obstacle to learning. Should factors such as communication skills be considered in evaluating the quality of an instructor? Sure, the ultimate metric is whether or not the student improves, but unless there is a more meaningful appraisal of the instructor s/he will have little opportunity to learn from from the metric.

IMO there is little reason to critique an instructor unless s/he has an opportunity to learn from it. It also helps when specifics are applied that can help other students identify how they might respond to the training environment. Some students learn better in the classroom and some learn better hands-on. Identifying whether or an instructor is 'good' in terms of nothing other than net average student improvement leaves out a lot of info that student could use to identify instructors that might not be that good overall, but really cater to certain learning styles of certain students.

I also believe that people learn better if they are relaxed and unafraid, as opposed to being motivated by fear, hatred or a sick affinity for pain and humiliation. At the same time, nothing is accomplished wihout work, and some people don't like work. There is always some discomfort when people are asked to do things they are not yet good at.

Motivating students is such an interesting area of study. If I am a former delta-operator, I am goung to have a student with an entirely different kind of motivation than if I am a hobby-instructor with a completely unrelated day-job. That is a good reason not to judge an instructor soley on percieved safety and pain. Nevertheless, if different motivational factors can be meaningfully put into perspective, that will have a huge impact on the quality of the assessment of the instructor.

Relying soley on net average improvement from beginning of class to end of class could easily result in classifying RandyC as an equal of some JoeS that just got into the business a couple weeks ago. That may or may not be warranted, and as such it seems that the single dimension evaluation of an instructor could be lacking.

Given this set of value judgments, people who share these values should rate the merits of an instructor according to:

(1) Net improvement in the skills, abilities and understanding of the students, per unit of instruction, assessed at the end of the course; in light of

(2) Whether designated safety protocols satisfactory to the students are maintained throughout the course; and

(3) Whether his courses are conducted such that, at a minimum, there is not so much pain students are distracted from the educational mission.

Are those the only factors?

The catch to all this is that if the course material is inherently ineffective, the course will be worthless regardless of the instructor. If the instructor teaches nonsense very well, it’s still nonsense. This is not the instructor’s fault, unless the instructor picked the course material. I have to conclude that what an instructor teaches - program content - is a factor which will outwegh anything else in the selection of a course.

Psychology teaches that confidence alone can improve performance significantly. I am of the opinion, as unfortunate as it may be, that a master speaker/motivator can teach poor technique and still gain net improvement... Especially when working with an art such as shooting very much is.

Anyway, I hope my mish-mash of barely organized thoughts helps you in your effort. I am always really excited to see individuals that want to seriously analyze firearms instruction because, I feel that the field is so loosely defined that it is a perfect playground for charlatins and snake-oil salesmen.

[PeteG]

I am always really excited to see individuals that want to seriously analyze firearms instruction because, I feel that the field is so loosely defined that it is a perfect playground for charlatins and snake-oil salesmen.

In 2004 and 2005, if my memory serves as to the years, we worked on organizing a 3-day conference of representatives of various established training organizations do tackle some of the more specific questions you raise. I corresponded with the Late Col. Cooper on the subject rather extensively, as he had tackled the problem many times, had lots of experience selecting instructors, and had agreed to be the keynote speaker. His interest in the subject, and the insights he developed, were very keen.

Even with the backing of some of the industry “heavy hitters,” we simply could not pull it off. It was amazing the ... let's call it "political resistance" … we ran into.

This guy would not attend if that guy was going to be there. This agency saw no point in attending because they were -----, and they already knew what was required (them, of course). The other guy would not come unless his buddy was also invited. People did not want to reveal their "confidential, proprietary methods." My gawwwwddd!! It would literally take a full-time person six months to handle that job, and we did not have the manpower. Col. Cooper fell ill, and we threw in the towel.

I agree that my premise is so simple it borders on tautology. But when you say “If the training community doesn't get that yet, then the concept for your article could be revolutionary,” you hit on a key question. DOES the “training community” “get that”? (Which invites the question, what IS “the training community”?)

I have suggested that having a military or police background is neither necessary nor sufficient, that surviving a gunfight means nothing without a great deal more information about the evolution of teh gunfight and how the individual acquitted himself or herself, or that teaching 120 classes is not the same thing as teaching one class 120 times. You should hear the carping and personal attacks (pretty much entirely, so far as I could tell, from those who promote themselves by reference to [a weak] military or police background, having survived a gunfight, or how long they have been “running a range” - doing annual qualification courses.)

Obviously, I never suggested that these backgrounds, having experienced gunfights or having taught many classes are necessarily immaterial to the development of a particular individual as an instructor. (Obvious to me, anyway.) The people in this field I respect the most have some or all of these in their backgrounds, and have used them to very good effect. But that is them.

My experience has convinced me that some elements within the firearms training industry either don’t "get it" themselves, or do get it but spend a lot of time and effort obscuring the fact so their prospective "customers" don't "get it."

So, baby steps. If there can be consensus on this much, then we can start asking the harder, more interesting questions. You hit some of them.

Other examples would be whether making the art and profession of firearms instruction into a for-profit business is necessarily corrupting? Is it better to be a full-time trainer, and risk “burn out,” or to have a separate career and pursue this as a calling, even though part-timers don't work with the material nearly so regularly? And, as you have asked, how does one MEASURE any of this?

I do not believe we will ever have “the” answers, because almost no broad conclusions could ever be verified. Which is, as you say, why any ding-bat with khaki pants and a whistle can jump in, and we have so many confidence men with shaved heads and khaki pants, and fledgling cult leaders, strutting around convincing people they have, if not THE secret, then at lease a corner on how to get this done.

But I have also seen that just asking the questions can expose some truth.

Here's a clue: you can always tell where a man's been hit by where the swelling occurs.

[Shawn.L]

I am a "training manager" at my work. What that means is that certain managers are chosen to take newly hired or promoted managment and train them through what is generally an 8 week period until they are ready for their first position. Which is normally an assistant position even if they are headed into general management.

There are a few ways my performance is judged.

First and formost is always the performance of my trainee's. To be clear though it is always understood that some will work hard and some will not. Its not so much the average of the skills I teach them that is examined but the average after the outliers are removed.

It is also very important that I teach them the skills they will need, wether or not they are then capable of performing must be taken into account seperately. Of course there are always those that would blame their performance on their teacher, but when the vast majority can perform its pretty obvious.

One of the most valuable assets I think I provide personally is that I always explain to them that once they are done and leave I am always available to offer feedback and assistance without strings. If they have a problem or question they can call. Normally just knowing they have support does a great deal to help them find their confidence and perform.

[PeteG]

Psychology teaches that confidence alone can improve performance significantly.

I agree. However, is it moral to instill confidence one knows to be unwarranted (false confidence), where the consequences can be so dire?

It is very good marketing to have every student leave thinking they are Tarzan. It is also almost always a lie.

This technique was used extensively by the cults known as est and Lifespring, and others who will sue me if I so much as use thier name. I know of at least two schools that consciously and deliberately use this manipulation to generate positive "buzz" and bring in repeat business, although I'm not sure they realize what they are doing. Both schools use instructors I believe to be underqualified, and based upon what I have seen of their graduates the "confidence" is generally unjustified.

The responsible answer, in my view, is to generously point out a student's genuine accomplishments (which better show up on a target and in thier overt expressions of an understanding of the process), but also point out what they do NOT yet know, and how to advance.

There's a line between realistic and cautious assessment and belittling. A good instructor knows where it is.

Does that go on the list?

[PeteG]

I look forward to when you do an analysis of how certain factors interact with others in the training enironment.

Why don't you do one?

There's a lot of brain-power on this Board (when they are not drowned out by people arguing over 9 mm vs. .45).

I forget the computer-age word for it, but it refers to a community of individuals developing an idea. Linus what-s-name ...

[ted murphy]

I have taken quite a few classes in the past 12+ years. Most have been tactical/gunfighting oriented, and some have been competition oriented.

I think a quality instructor has to be more interested in the shooter learning than he is creating a certificate mill. This sounds basic on the forefront, but I have encountered far too many shooters who have attended multiple "XYZ" academy courses and still cannot hold the gun solidly, be able to make a decent stance, or hit the target reliably at 10-25 yards. I don't have a lot of respect for that instructor as he is putting his name on what I consider to be an inferior product. It is true that some shooters want to take the class and not put in the work, but when I consistently see graduates of instructors be sub-par gunhands, then I consider the instructor to be the weak link. Any graduate of any training academy should be able to acquit themselves well accuracy wise on any type of USPSA or IDPA standards. Their time may or may not be great, but they should have the fundamentals to deliver the hits. Many cannot.

The instructor should have a set of basic skills in his own personal toolbox. He should be able to hit what he aims out past 50 yards. He should be able to have a solid base of shooting strong and support hand, shooting on the move, shooting from odd positions, and handling ammunition management. Furthermore, his ego and confidence should be enough that he can demonstrate this to the class when the need arises. If he cannot put the bullet where it needs to go, he has to go back to school before he teaches others. If he will not shoot in front of his students, I put him in the "poser" category.

An instructor needs to know the material he is teaching, and be confident in its presentation. He needs to learn and grow his syllabus, and be open to at least trying new ideas as they come down. He needs to learn all the popular gun platforms, so he can teach people to use any kind of gun that might be brought to class. If he wants to keep it specific to a certain platform or family of guns, be sure to tell people in advance.

A good instructor needs to remove his ego from things. If he makes mistakes or otherwise looks bad, he should move on and not dwell on it. Style points if he can joke about it.

You can learn techniques from anyone who has experience and training themselves. I've taken classes from non Been There- Done That instructors who still had a valid course that I learned from. The main difference is that you will not glean anything from their experiences, as they have none. That may or not be a good thing. The techniques will be valid either way.

I have to admit a preference to BTDT instructors, but I've had good instruction from those that had not fired a shot in anger too.

There is also a disconnect. Some BTDT people may have had fighting experience that is different than teaching individual Self Defense tactics. A Cop who spent 20 years on a SWAT team might not be as good an instructor for 1 on 1 self defense than a Cop who walked a beat for 20 years. Both will have experience, but of a different sort. I got to shoot a spec ops guy a few years ago. We were messing around with house clearing and he mentioned his Real World tactic was throwing in grenades, and then shooting up any potential hiding place. Not a good civilian tactic. He of course knew a more sanitized way to enter houses, which is what he was teaching- but his life experience tactic was something he could not exactly teach to homeowners.

A friend once told me that you can learn shooting and skills from a lot of people, but to learning fighting and mindset was pretty much something you had to learn on the fly and as a pass/fail real world course . His direct quote was, "If you want to learn to fight, then take a retired Marine Gunny out to the bar for the night." There is some truth to that. You can explain mindset to people, and give them the path to learning what it is and how to implement it, but that is rather difficult to fully impart on the square range.

In the end of the day, a good instructor who knows iron can teach you some really solid tactics and give you the basic tools to defend yourself. Some can draw from personal experience and give you insight into fighting, some cannot. For most people, quality training can mean the difference between a planned response and a panic response when something bad happens. For other people, they could get the best training in the world and still be food. You cannot trump genetics, and some people are born to be hard cases, others are lunch.

Ted

[Carnes]

I am always really excited to see individuals that want to seriously analyze firearms instruction because, I feel that the field is so loosely defined that it is a perfect playground for charlatins and snake-oil salesmen.

In 2004 and 2005, if my memory serves as to the years, we worked on organizing a 3-day conference of representatives of various established training organizations do tackle some of the more specific questions you raise. I corresponded with the Late Col. Cooper on the subject rather extensively, as he had tackled the problem many times, had lots of experience selecting instructors, and had agreed to be the keynote speaker. His interest in the subject, and the insights he developed, were very keen.

Even with the backing of some of the industry “heavy hitters,” we simply could not pull it off. It was amazing the ... let's call it "political resistance" … we ran into.

This guy would not attend if that guy was going to be there. This agency saw no point in attending because they were -----, and they already knew what was required (them, of course). The other guy would not come unless his buddy was also invited. People did not want to reveal their "confidential, proprietary methods." My gawwwwddd!! It would literally take a full-time person six months to handle that job, and we did not have the manpower. Col. Cooper fell ill, and we threw in the towel.

Meh, things like this just reinforce my speculation that there are a lot of charlatans involved in the business of firearms training. If someone is making a living selling their 'proprietary method' it would not likely benefit them much to attend a convention where it could be determined that their method is poppycock.

Now, on the other hand, there is certainly a relevant consideration regarding the purpose of the training. I feel that HSLD training conducted by HSLD guys, for guys that are going to deploy to nasty places to do HSLD things is a pretty squared away field. These guys know how to run and gun in ways that are meaningful in that environment. The problem arises when people want to sell their product to the average citizen. There simply aren't going to be enough students of any given instructor getting into situations where they need to apply the taught self defense techniques for any statistically significant analysis. The best that an instructor is going to be able to get is a student or two involved in a situation and whether the student is successful or not is not particularly relevant because it only provides anecdotal evidence. That being the case I could make a living cooking up the most absurd possible methods for applying defensive tactics and so long as my rhetoric, communication skills, background and whatnot is compelling and inspires confidence, it won't really matter how good the product really is because it won't ever be tested in a statistically significant way.

I am developing a strategy for overcoming that, but it is proprietary and I don't think I can get everyone reading this to enter into a non-disclosure agreement.

I agree that my premise is so simple it borders on tautology. But when you say “If the training community doesn't get that yet, then the concept for your article could be revolutionary,” you hit on a key question. DOES the “training community” “get that”? (Which invites the question, what IS “the training community”?)

Two good questions. Got to start with 'what is the training community,' as that would be a necessary premise for determining if 'they' get it or not.

Ultimately the training community is composed of those that provide training, and those that consume it. It's probably necessary to divide the training community into two categories in order to make the discussion more relevant. People that provide and consume training for professional purposes are going to be in a different category than those that consume training for recreational and/or civilian defensive preparedness.

I think the professional training community does indeed recognize that the metric for successful instruction is based on student improvement, and student success in real world situations. The metric for successful instruction is probably a lot more fuzzy when it comes to the civilian training community. Unfortunately, I think that comes with the territory because, as I mentioned earlier, there isn't going to be any stistically significant evidence showing whether methods taught are going to be effective in real world applications, and the implication of that is that any testing that the instructor uses to gauge the student's improvement is going to have to be somewhat arbitrary. At best, the instructor can hypothesize which factors are the most meaningful in identifying the student's success or failure, but there is going to be a lot of room for different instructors to argue that their method is better, and the winner of that argument will be the instructor that is a better rhetorician because it simply won't ever be able to be proven in our current, stable, society.

Nevertheless, I think it is worthwhile to strive toward a 'more perfect hypothesis' regarding how to best train the civilian community. When you put out a really high quality product, people are going to be able to recognize that.

I have suggested that having a military or police background is neither necessary nor sufficient, that surviving a gunfight means nothing without a great deal more information about the evolution of teh gunfight and how the individual acquitted himself or herself, or that teaching 120 classes is not the same thing as teaching one class 120 times. You should hear the carping and personal attacks (pretty much entirely, so far as I could tell, from those who promote themselves by reference to [a weak] military or police background, having survived a gunfight, or how long they have been “running a range” - doing annual qualification courses.)

Yep. Teaching military tactics requires a military background, teaching police tactics requires a police background, and teaching civilian tactics requires a civilian background. That's not to say that having experience in police and military tactics is not going to be a benefit to teaching civilian applications, but I agree that it is not necessary.

My experience has convinced me that some elements within the firearms training industry either don’t "get it" themselves, or do get it but spend a lot of time and effort obscuring the fact so their prospective "customers" don't "get it."

Well, again, if the instructor gets to define what success is, the instructor will always be able to 'prove' that the students are improving. Even if success is defined as net student improvement from beginning of class to the end of class There would have to be some universally accepted standard for evaluating 'civilian defensive tactics,' otherwise the instructor can judge the students 'improvement' based on skills that might not really be meaningful.

The more I talk through this, the more I am starting to think that it might be more beneficial to the civilian training community to have an article that helps the student to be a more educated consumer than to try to pin down a grand unified theory of what makes one instructor better than another.

So, baby steps. If there can be consensus on this much, then we can start asking the harder, more interesting questions. You hit some of them.

Okay, let's try to define what we want the consensus to be on then. If I am not mistaken, you propose that, 'The merit of an instructor is directly proportional to the average net improvement of students that take the class.'

I think I like the way that sounds. Before I can join the consensus though, I am going to have to understand how you define and measure 'improvement.'

Other examples would be whether making the art and profession of firearms instruction into a for-profit business is necessarily corrupting? Is it better to be a full-time trainer, and risk “burn out,” or to have a separate career and pursue this as a calling, even though part-timers don't work with the material nearly so regularly? And, as you have asked, how does one MEASURE any of this?

I'm not sure why you would suggest that teaching a skill/art for profit would be necessarily corrupting. While I see that there is a lot of opportunity (and possibly compulsion) for corruption in a field as loosely defined as training the defensive use of weapons to apply lethal force, I'm curious about what would make you think it is necessarily corrupting.

So is part time better than full time? For profit better than not for profit? How to measure it? Well, I don't think that teaching the art/skill of firearms application is significantly different from teaching any other art/skill. Certain things are going to have an impact on students, but are not necessarily defining the instructor. I'm trying to say it matters, and it doesn't matter.

If Picasso were running a multi-million dollar art instruction complex, that is going to have an impact on the student. Picasso is going to have some big advantages because he is a Pro, is internationally recognized, has BTDT and has a great facility. The thing is, though, Picasso could be a horrible teacher. Or maybe Picasso knows how to do what works, but was never able to understand the underlying principals that would allow a student to be able to generate successful applications in a dynamic environment.

Now, if some Schmoe comes along and starts teaching art, part time, out of his garage there is nothing to stop him from cranking out Picasso caliber students, but he will face a different set of hurdles regarding achieving success and what kind of approach he takes to instruction.

There are so many dynamics involved... It's all very fascinating. I don't think that measuring it is as important as just being aware of how the different dynamics can influence the training environment.

Picasso can just sneer and say, 'you're doing it wrong,' whereas Schmoe is probably going to have to be a lot more gentile and be prepared to explain everything down to the smallest detail/core fundamental.

The unfortunate aspect of civilian defensive firearms training is that it is more challenging to be able to identify if you have developed a Picasso or not.

I do not believe we will ever have “the” answers, because almost no broad conclusions could ever be verified.

Maybe... Now that I read this, I realize I could have shortened a lot of the stuff I wrote above considerably. Nevertheless, I like to pursue a 'more perfect' solution, and I believe there are some out there.

But I have also seen that just asking the questions can expose some truth.

Absolutely. Discussing this stuff with someone that is genuinely interested in improving the state of the 'civilian training community' is going to expose a lot.