A long time ago in SPoR, we realised that the traditional curriculum in risk and safety needed to be extended. We called on reform of the curriculum many years ago (https://safetyrisk.net/isnt-it-time-we-reformed-the-whs-curriculum/). This challenge for reform was about adding to the safety curriculum, reducing some subjects but about eradicating it.

The challenge remains for Safety to be able to create studies that are balanced, proportional and Transdisciplinary.

The situation is that the safety curriculum continues to indoctrinate people in myths and ideas that are both outdated and unhelpful eg. models by Heinrich, Reason etc. Such theory and semiotic models promote hierarchical and linear modes of thinking that do not reflect the realities or complexities of risk, incidents or events. Similarly, the curriculum is yet to tackle the challenges of ethics, communication skills or worker engagement.

I saw a great map the other day of how disciplines can associate, collaborate and inform each other. Whilst each map has a strength, it is the Transdisciplinary strategy that helps best when tackling ‘wicked problems’. This is also well articulated in the research of Dr Craig Ashhurst, an associate of SPoR. You can download and read Craig’s PhD here: https://openresearch-repository.anu.edu.au/items/7931fab2-5104-4752-9119-fdf9b25fa224

Craig is also Director of Niche Thinking (https://nichethinking.net.au/about/) and helps organisations facilitate Transdisciplinary strategy and action. Craig is a lecturer at the Australian national University at the Fenner School of Environment & Society.

Craig and I met over 30 years ago in Teaching and Learning in the Education System. We both specialise in curriculum and pedagogy as a route to Transdisciplinary organising.

Sometimes it is in the generalist disciplines like Education and Learning, that are shared across all disciplines, that the best pathway can be found to bring the disciplines together.

Risk and safety could also be such a generalist discipline (Karanikas – Professional Generalism in a Hyper-specialised World) because its agenda should work across all disciplines too. Unfortunately, this is not the case, because its curriculum at its foundations is too narrow and focused primarily on behaviourism, engineering, regulation and deontology.

Unless the industry can broaden its curriculum, engage with other disciplines that it doesn’t understand and learn to listen, it will never be able to be a vehicle for Transdisciplinarity. Unfortunately, this narrowness of anchoring to compliance, regulation and conformance limits its ability to engage outside of its own boundaries.

In most curriculum development it is what gets in first that has a lasting effect.

Once one has been taught that safety is about policing regulation, it takes a long time for other agenda about persons, communication skills and ethics to get much of a hearing.

In Education and Teaching one starts off in generalist studies and only later are specialisations considered. Indeed, as part of Education and Teaching one never studies the Education Act, one studies: the nature of children, learning development, cognition and pedagogy. Indeed, in schools there are opportunities for disciplines to work with and across each other rather than develop into silos.

If Risk and Safety were a generalist discipline, it too could become a foundation for working across all disciplines, wouldn’t that be amazing. Alas, this is a long way off.

In the SPoR curriculum (https://cllr.com.au/register-to-study/cllr-prospectus/), there are over thirty units that tackle perspectives outside of the traditional safety curriculum. These include studies in Linguistics, Anthropology, Social Psychology, Education and Learning, Politics, Ethics and Semiotics (https://cllr.com.au/elearning/). Indeed, Semiotics and Linguistics are other generalist disciplines that help transcend all disciplines and bring disciplines into a shared understanding.

The benefits of a broad curriculum are beyond calculation and measurement. Indeed, anchoring to measurement thinking is another impediment that limits the ability of Safety to become Transdisciplinary. Safety would need to let go of its fixation on measurement to ever be able to engage with disciplines that are beyond measurment.

When one is faced with safety as a ‘wicked problem’ that is, problems that can’t be fixed (https://safetyrisk.net/safety-wicked-problem/), one needs as many disciplines to work together to ‘tackle’ its challenges.

Safety as a ‘wicked problem’ was presented (https://safetyrisk.net/risk-and-safety-as-a-wicked-problem/) 12 years ago in a research project that showed what CEOs thought about safety imporvement (https://www.peterwagner.com.au/wp-content/uploads/Safety-A-Wicked-Problem2.pdf).

When one is faced with the many paradoxes of safety eg. zero drives under-reporting, risk aversion diminishes learning, injury rates don’t measure safety, counting cannot measure what counts, extrinsic reward diminishes output, conformance diminishes creativity, performance can’t be measured etc. One realises that Safety needs a much broader base to tackle its many challenges.

How are things going to improve if the safety agenda is the same old stuff, just badged differently? Just look at all the safety podcasts, what are they talking about? How is the industry going to step outside of the narrow band it has created to learn from other disciplines? How is practice going to improve if there is no broadening of methodology, method, curriculum and practice?

One of the strengths of the work of Craig Ashhurst is what he calls tackling the nature of colliding ‘worlds’. Indeed, the more disciplines narrow and specialise, the less likely they are to be able to work together or even speak a common language. The more narrow the worldview, the less likely a discipline can tackle the ambiguities of living in a VUCA world (https://www.forbes.com/sites/jeroenkraaijenbrink/2018/12/19/what-does-vuca-really-mean/).

The problem in the problem, is found in the ability to let go of one’s specialisation to move to listen to other disciplines one doesn’t understand. This is often an issue of professionalised power and territory. What does one have to give up to move in learning? How can one create room in one’s worldview and space for another view? How can one juggle competing worldviews with one’s own worldview? How can we learn about the unfamiliar whilst holding on too tightly with what is comfortable and familiar? How can one understand the language of another world view without a shared language?

These are all questions Safety could be thinking about in how it constructs its curriculum.