Toronto • May 28-29, 2010 • Student Day and Workshops: May 27
Program > Saturday > 11:15 > Session 13. Education, training and health promotion in occupational health
Paper: Safer workplace through authentic training
Author(s) and Affiliation(s):
G. Reza Emad, University of Victoria
Day/Time: Saturday at 11:15
Room: Armoury Suite, 2nd Floor
Objectives:
Each year many workers are injured, disabled or lose their lives in Canada. Accidents and incidents at work are the biggest challenges in the world of work. Investigations into industrial incidents have shown that the human errors due to the lack of competency are the main contributory factors. The purpose of this study is to investigate the processes that the workers develop their skills and associated transfer of knowledge and expertise to their workplace.
Methods:
This research is based on an ethnographic case study conducted in maritime settings-domain in Canada. The study is part of a larger research program designed to better understand the apparent contradictions in the maritime education and training system specifically designed to increase the competencies of practitioners. I attended and videotaped the classes and did interviews with students and the course designers and lecturers. My data sources comprise field notes, videotaped sessions in the classroom, and interviews. The data sources also included documents such as lecture notes, syllabi, handouts, Transport Canada’s rules and regulations.
Results:
In recent decades, the majority of training of newcomers has shifted from workplace to the training institutes, which separates the learning from practice. Mariners like any other workers attend training programs in anticipation of gaining proper skills and knowledge that they need in practice to work safely and efficiently on-board ships. Yet, throughout our research we found out that there is a gap between what mariners learn in their college-based training program and what they are supposed to do in the workplace. This gap is a source of risks to occupational health and safety on board of ships.
Conclusions:
There is a critical need for the comprehensive revision of vocational training system in Canada. The vocational pedagogy has to re-contextualize the field of practice itself and translate this field into curriculum. Apart from use of sophisticated technologies and the tasks, which needs higher order cognitive knowledge, most features of traditional practice in workplaces have properties that depend on particular contexts. The vocational pedagogy also has to consider the situated knowledge that is usually closely associated with those job tasks. Vocational pedagogy thus needs to consider both aspects: the occupationally re-contextualized disciplinary knowledge and the component of practice to be realized at workplace.
