Abstract:

Finding long-lasting solutions through education, namely with regard to social, environmental, and economic issues -the three pillars of sustainability- is equivalent with sustainable education. The concept involves active academic participation to create economic, social and environmental programs improving life standards, generating empowerment and respecting interdependence. It is no longer a matter of if but a matter of how all education levels can contribute toward this ambition. For this purpose, global, novel and transversal matters have gradually been encouraged and implemented in the traditional curricula. Current students as future workforce are exposed to an exponential and radical future that has to be addressed by current education. Although universities are much closer in the timeline of student employment, their pace of transformation towards an education for sustainability is still below the expected speed and step. For lower levels of education, secondary school and below, the gap is ever bigger. Good health and wellbeing, quality education, decent work and economic growth are only some of the 17 sustainable development goals (SDG) aiming for a better planet.

It is in this framework that we situate our present contribution that has the purpose to capture current and future teachers’ perception towards Occupational Safety and Health (OSH) in education. More concretely we aim to answer three research questions.
RQ1: What is trainee teachers’ previous training regarding OSH?
RQ2: Up to what degree OSH is and should be integrated in the curricula?
RQ3: What is trainee teachers’ attitude and action orientation towards integrating OSH in their future teaching professional practice?

The empirical evidence has been collected in the framework of a pan-European project namely Mind Safety! Safety Matters II ongoing since September 2019 until 2021. The basic methodological details of the study are summarised as:
i) context – HEI: University of Girona (Spain); faculty: Education and Psychology; Study: Masters’ in Teacher Training in Obligatory Secondary and Upper Secondary School Education, Vocational Training and Languages; type of study: mandatory for future secondary school level teachers; 60 ECTS,
ii) participants: students enrolled in the academic course 2018/2019; data collection timing: February 2019; total number of students: 120; Valid answers: 107.

Participants were informed about the project objective and previous project outcomes as well as the ongoing project’s aims and status. The data collection instrument consists in a short questionnaire combining 5 closed and 1 open ended questions. Answers were obtained using 5 point Likert scales varying according to the questions (agreement, importance, degree of integration). The majority (48.6%) of the respondents were Spanish and Catalan Philology students, the 28.9% from basic sciences (Biology and Geology/ Physics and Chemistry, and 22.4% were from Geography and History.

Results reveal that most of respondents (56.9%) did not receive any previous training in OSH and only 4 out of 10 (41.1%) declare having received some training, predominantly associated to previous jobs (not educational setting). Results regarding trainee teachers’ perception of OSH´s practices integration level show that 92 respondents, almost the 86% of the sample consider that there is practically no integration. These results are strong support to justify our proposal, an initiative to integrate OSH in secondary school level education.

Keywords:

Occupational Safety and Health, Training, Innovation, Education.