Background reading
The research behind the standards
Almost everything the DVSA expects of instructors today came out of European research carried out over the last twenty five years. If you have ever wondered where client centred learning, the higher levels of driver behaviour or the coaching approach actually came from, it came from here.
All four reports are free to download. None of them are light reading, but if you want to understand why the job is the way it is, this is the source material.
GADGET · EU research project
GADGET and the GDE Matrix
GADGET stands for Guarding Automobile Drivers through Guidance, Education and Technology. Its lasting output was the Goals for Driver Education matrix, usually shortened to the GDE Matrix, which sets out four levels of driver competence.
The bottom two levels cover vehicle control and handling traffic situations. The top two cover the goals and context of a journey, and the wider life factors that shape how someone drives. The research found that most crashes involving new drivers had little to do with the bottom two levels, and a great deal to do with the top two.
What it means in practiceEvery time a Standards Check form asks whether risk was identified and managed, or whether the pupil understood why something mattered rather than just how to do it, that is the GDE Matrix underneath. Teaching clutch control is level one. Asking someone why they agreed to drive four mates home at midnight is level four. Both matter, but only one of them is what kills new drivers.
Download the reportPDF, 725KB
Source: GADGET final report. Published under EU-funded research.
MERIT · CIECA
MERIT
MERIT examined minimum requirements for driving instructor training across Europe. It found enormous variation in what different countries expected of their instructors, and made the case for a common standard.
Its central argument was straightforward. If instructors are expected to teach at the higher levels of driver behaviour, then instructor training has to cover those levels too, along with the teaching methods needed to deliver them. You cannot teach what you were never taught.
What it means in practiceMERIT is a large part of why instructor qualification moved away from demonstrating your own driving and towards demonstrating how you develop someone else's. If you have ever wondered why Part 3 stopped being a set of prepared briefings delivered to a role-playing examiner, the thinking starts here.
Download the reportPDF, 2MB
Source: MERIT final report, CIECA.
HERMES · EU project
HERMES
HERMES set out to build a practical training package teaching driving instructors how to coach. It ran for three years from 2007 and brought together instructors, psychologists and coaching specialists from across Europe.
Its definition of coaching is worth knowing by heart: raising awareness, developing responsibility, and motivating the learner to make their own decisions. It builds on what the learner has already experienced rather than on what the instructor knows.
What it means in practiceThis is where client centred learning came from as a working method rather than a theory. It is also the answer to anyone who says coaching means sitting in silence asking vague questions. HERMES was explicit that coaching is structured, purposeful and considerably harder to do well than telling someone what to do.
Download the reportPDF, 3MB
Source: HERMES project. Published under EU-funded research.
CIECA-RUE · CIECA, 2015
CIECA-RUE
The Road User Education project made recommendations on minimum driver competence standards, a framework for a curriculum, and minimum requirements for driving instructors. Fourteen countries took part.
One of its clearest statements is that a driver must be able to drive safely and responsibly in all situations and conditions, and that this requires self-knowledge and an understanding of risk, not simply knowledge and skills.
What it means in practiceThe most useful part for a working instructor is the argument that competence is not permanent. People change, vehicles change, roads change and the law changes. The report makes the case that drivers need to keep developing after they pass. The same logic applies to instructors, and it is the entire argument for CPD in one sentence.
Download the reportPDF, 3MB
Source: CIECA-RUE final report, March 2015.
Going further
Where this shows up in our training
You do not need to read any of these to be a good instructor. But if you have ever been told to be more client centred without being told what that actually means, or been marked down on risk management without understanding why it matters, the answers are in these four documents.
We work through the practical side of all of this on our workshops, without the academic language.