A Proposed Cognitive Model for Teaching and Training in Occupational Safety and Health, and an Evaluation by Experts

This paper is about improving Instructional Design (ID) for safety education through the use of a simple and comprehensive Safety Cognitive Model (SCM). Well-structured cognitive models make both teaching and learning easy, produce deeper understanding, and are more appealing to learners. The proposed SCM contains no new safety knowledge, but rather organizes and presents information in a novel manner. This paper consists of a discussion of essential background on learning and the importance of having a comprehensive and unified cognitive model for safety, a “pictorial essay” encompassing ten original illustrations that constitute the proposed safety cognitive model, and the final part includes experts’ evaluation of the model as it is presented in this paper. Twenty-three safety professionals were asked to review the SCM; they were requested to fill in a survey and provide any additional comments or personal thoughts. Results indicated that the model was not entirely novel, but it rather organized all the basic safety principles in an integrated, holistic, and simple model. Recommendations are made for independent evaluations of the model for further improvements. This paper is written for experienced safety professionals, as it assumes knowledge of safety basics