The general belief among the majority is that everyone can teach driving simply because he or she is a good driver. It doesn’t. Consider it as follows– because you can make a beautiful Sunday roast does not mean that you can manage a restaurant kitchen. Driving training is a job, and it takes training to get one there. It is both an utter extravagance of the mind to watch a student, read road signs, predict dangers and provide gentle spoken teaching at the same time before it turns smooth. Building confidence as a trainer feels easier when you see details of real course experiences.

The training programs of the instructors can be divided into different stages and all of them have teeth. First stage hammers theory: laws of traffic, risk assessment, hazard perception, and psychological structure of adult learning. Of course there is real psychology. Adults do not learn like teenagers and a 45 year old learning to drive the first time has baggage to contend with; anxiety, self-consciousness, a history of being good at things, that a 17 year old has no. Teachers must have the means to cope with both. The second stage takes the trainees behind the wheel in a totally different role. Forget driving well. Now you must drive and at the same time teach somebody to drive. It is another game altogether.

This is what the brochures do not promote: much of the training of instructors is learning to control your own responses. A child who falls asleep in a traffic jam due to wrong judgment of a curve – that happens. A teacher who takes the wheel in panic and screams is more of a hindrance than an asset. Training activities waste actual hours tappeting serene intervention methods, dual-steerage familiarisation, and what one trainer terms silence discipline – understanding when nothing is the best lesson you can teach. As say one of your seasoned instructors: your face is always teaching when your mouth is not.

Formal instructor qualification rates are at a lower level than most candidates anticipate. In the UK, the ADI Part 2 driving test, for example, requires near-faultless driving to such a standard that is above the standard test. Part 3 the instructional ability test – this is the trap that even the more practiced candidates fall into since competence and being able to display competence under the observation are two entirely different things. It is a big deal here, preparation. Separating the candidates that scrape through the mock tests, the peer feedback sessions, and the reflective practice logs are the difference between the ones who develop their careers and those who do not.

A good teacher is not someone with talent; he is someone who has made the time to invest in his learning. The road rules shift. Recent studies about cognitive load as well as learning motor skills revolutionize best practice. The demographics of learners change. When instructors take their qualification as a finish line instead of a starting point, they are likely to plateau quickly. Those who remain inquisitive, and who at times sit in on one another lessons or attend CPD workshops continue to improve. That incremental advancement is reflected in actual student pass rates, student retention of lessons and, quite honestly, in the degree of teacher enjoyment of the job in the long-term.