Constructing A ‘Culture of Safety’: An Examination of the Assumptions Embedded in Occupational Safety and Health Curricula Delivered to High School Students and Fish Harvesters in Newfoundland and Labrador, Canada

Abstract

Occupational safety and health training is often presented as a primary intervention strategy for reducing the risk of work-related accidents and injuries. Unacknowledged assumptions about the nature of risk, health and safety, as well as assumptions about how best to intervene, are often embedded in such training. In this paper we uncover some of the underlying assumptions in the occupational safety and health curricula targeting two distinct groups of workers in the province of Newfoundland and Labrador: young people at high school and fish harvesters. We use data from two SafetyNet studies, both of which used a mixed methods approach, including content and discourse analyses of textbooks and curriculum guides, observations of the classroom delivery of the occupational safety and health curriculum, qualitative interviews with instructors and key informants, and a review of public documents and media representations. In the analysis we examine the ways in which risk, health and safety are discussed in the print curricula and in the classroom, and we show that occupational safety and health training for both groups is informed by an underlying assumption that workplace-related injuries, accidents and diseases can be attributed mainly to human error or workers’ lack of knowledge. Both curricula tend to prescribe the development of a culture of safety to mitigate occupational risk, focusing on the transfer of expert occupational safety and health knowledge to individual workers, with the goal of changing their attitudes and behaviours rather than encouraging a more holistic approach to prevention. This prescription involves the presentation of occupational safety and health knowledge as technical, objective and transferrable to multiple contexts, thereby shifting the focus away from the social contexts and relations, and the particular work environments that mediate awareness and the ability of workers to use their knowledge to mitigate risks and to work safely.