Teaching practice in safety education: qualitative evidence

Abstract

Although health, safety and risk education for school pupils has received growing attention in recent years, for the most part related education programmes and research aimed at assessing those programmes have focused on health education, with relatively little attention paid to the array of immediate safety risks that are confronting pupils within the school context. This article reports on research carried out with teaching staff in seven schools to establish the approaches that teachers adopt when delivering lessons with inherent risks. This research is primarily concerned to investigate how a safety education strategy in a school context is implemented, operationalised, communicated and presented to pupils, and to establish whether approaches depart from the theories and prescriptions advanced by education advisors and other Government bodies or stakeholders. The perceptions of the teachers are used as a basis for a broader discussion about the adequacy of safety education and the potential to enhance and broaden the delivery of a safety education curriculum implemented through state schools.