Nurturing Positive Attitudes Toward our Health and Safety

Growing up with positive attitudes to health and safety

Values and attitudes are nurtured from childhood, when learning about the world is new and exciting and when neurological development is at its most active point. As parents and as teachers, we give time to nurturing a plethora of values that support children to grow into happy, healthy, responsible citizens that contribute to our workforce. Should childhood be the time when we pay attention to nurturing positive attitudes to being healthy and safe, when the mind is so open, the body so active and when enthusiasm is abound? an you imagine a work space where health and safety is exciting? This is not a natural reaction for most people.

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Workers in all industries can see and appreciate that issues around health and safety are necessary, but in a work space full of three and four year olds, health and safety is an exciting topic. It’s a place where risk taking occurs all day, everyday and where adults have to think creatively about how to respond and be proactive in ensuring the balance of risk taking and risk awareness is nurtured.I work in a natural bush setting, a builder’s yard, a construction site, an artist’s studio, a science lab and a library all cocooned into one place known as a kindergarten: the children’s garden. This is a place where we nurture life long learning and there are few things more important than nurturing a healthy attitude to one’s own health as well as to the well-being of others.Well-being is at the heart of Worksafe’s vision to ensure that all people, “return home safe from work,” an admirable and heartfelt vision by New Zealand’s workplace health and safety regulator, which sadly, has not been realised by all. The hard work is being done to address unacceptable statistics regarding injury and death and we are all experiencing the changes in health and safety reforms in our workplaces. Yet, the work on our societal attitude toward health and safety could and perhaps should start much earlier.

A child’s brain is more active than an adult’s

There are references to safety in New Zealand’s early childhood and primary school curriculum, but these are largely about providing a safe environment. There are also many references to “risk-taking” as a means to learning. Currently however, teaching “safety” in our education system typically starts at high school. Whilst this is a time when young people are beginning to consider their work options, it is also a time when many neurological pathways have already been established. Some of the most important brain development has already occurred much earlier in life and some attitudes have been set. Research from the Brainwave trust on neuroscience tells us that a baby’s brain is only 15% formed at birth with the majority of the remaining 85% formed in the first three years of life. A child’s brain is actually more active than an adult’s and experiences in the early years have a direct impact on how a child’s brain develops.

Attitudes towards health and safety are variable

There is no comprehensive and well established approach, consistent across all education sectors, with regards to teaching and learning of health and safety in New Zealand. Teachers recognise that health and safety is ultimately about well-being, but because teachers in the early and primary years are not explicitly instructed in the curriculum to teach health and safety, then attitudes toward it vary. Health and safety is sometimes viewed as a compliance issue designated to be managed by those with a specific health and safety role. In addition, health and safety requirements can appear to be at odds with the “risk taking” that is encouraged and viewed as a key role in learning.Risk taking is enormously important and can traverse a huge range of learning areas, from daring to speak out loud in a group to finding the confidence to take on a physical challenge. Teachers also know that to be risk averse can hinder learning, but perhaps we should be exercising some caution when viewing risk taking as a dominant learning tool and consider more thoughtfully how we balance risk taking with risk awareness.The Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents (RoSPA), a charitable organisation providing schools in the UK with the skills and knowledge to prevent serious accidents, emphasise the need to integrate risk and safety education into the curriculum to create the “risk aware” but not “risk averse” citizens of tomorrow and to make schools as safe as “necessary,” not as safe as “possible.”

Integrating risk and safety education in an action based learning environment

Kindergarten is the perfect place to nurture these citizens of tomorrow and to integrate risk and safety education. Action based or play based learning is the foundation of kindergarten and is a growing approach in primary schools, as ever increasing research teaches us that children learn more effectively when they are actively engaged. The environment that we nurture so well in kindergarten naturally encourages risk at a developmentally appropriate level and if we can cleverly layer this with direct instruction and techniques on how to be safe during activity, we have the ability to embed healthy attitudes toward safety. Children are so responsive to instruction around how to use a particular tool for example, or how many people should properly lift that log and how to ensure a ladder is secure before climbing. In my experience, teachers can see and hear directly from children’s actions and words and the impact they are having on their growing attitudes around safety. They can see the growing empathy that children develop toward their peers and the leadership they start to take on surrounding safety responsibility. Measuring progress in the early years is very much to do with children’s growing attitudes and dispositions and how these are reflected in what teachers see and hear. After leading a project in our playground I recently heard a four year old saying, “That’s a two man job,” when attempting to move a sleeper. If teachers apply a considered and intentional approach to risk and safety education, then it is enormously rewarding to hear and see the direct impact of that teaching. Children at a young age take such pride in being leaders, stewards and ambassadors. I’m sure we can all appreciate this from our school days of having the responsibility of being a “monitor” of some kind. Things haven’t changed that much. It’s simply that words are different and the areas of responsibility are not restricted to playground watch or milk duty. We can now see, for example, how children become effective environmental ambassadors, how they proudly teach their parents new behaviours and take on rather righteous attitudes. As annoying as that may seem at times, it is proof that attitudes, values and responsibility can be developed early in life.

Joining the dots

Given all that we know about how young children learn and seeing the huge movement in New Zealand toward progressing action based learning, should we not be joining more dots and exploring the connection between health and safety education and improved attitudes towards health and safety in the workplace? This would ultimately ensure that we all, “return home from work healthy and safe.” As a teacher with a particular interest in this area, I believe that there is work to be done here and that Worksafe New Zealand and the Ministry of Education could begin to make more connections on health and safety education. I believe that we can be excited about this topic, that it can be rewarding for teachers and meaningful to children, if naturally integrated into action based learning.

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Carolyn Darby