Tackling Risk, A Field Guide to Risk and Learning

FOR A FREE PREVIEW YOU CAN DOWNLOAD CHAPTER 1 HERE: Tackling Risk Chapter 1

Following on from the very successful publication of the Risky Conversations video series and book, Dr Long and Roy Fitzgerald are proud to announce the publication of book six in the series on risk: Tackling Risk, A Field Guide to Risk and Learning. You can purchase your copy here

This is a book that focuses on the interrelationship of risk with learning. As Dr Long writes inside the cover of many of his books: ‘there is no learning without risk, and no real living without learning’. This truism is often absent in many organisations that advocate risk aversion as a sense-able approach to tackling risk. The idea of wrapping oneself up in cotton wool and avoiding the risks of living in the world is a strange way to engage in living. Risk is not a problem, risk is not wrong. It’s how humans Tackle Risk that is important and what is traded off in that process.

Roy and Rob are both educational experts in their particular fields of learning. Roy has over 40 years experience in graphic and visualized learning and Rob in the social psychology of learning. Both Rob and Roy work globally with many organisations that seek to learn and tackle risk in a mature way. The combination of both Roy and Rob’s perspectives in the book and the interweaving of the visual and social methodologies makes for fascinating reading. This is a book for practitioners in risk, safety and security, it is a Field Guide with a neat nexus of theory with practice.

This book is the fourth collaboration in authorship in the series on risk. Book seven due out in 2018 is another collaboration and tackles the challenges of sign systems and symbology in the communication of risk. As a precursor, the approach to visual learning in Tackling Risk in Chapter five raises important issues for understanding why some visual messaging in risk, safety and security often works against what people want to communicate.

If one of the core values in your business is learning (and in most culture surveys and reviews we do, it is not) then this is a book for you. Understanding key principles in education and learning are essential if continuous improvement is to mean anything in your organization. Similarly, if your inductions are boring and ineffective or have moved to online methods and are meaningless, then this is a book for you. It simply doesn’t make sense to conduct inductions, training or reporting without some expertise in education, learning and visual design in learning.

There is nothing more exciting that the fun of learning and nothing more boring than poor training and regurgitating propaganda as something new. The nonsense of ‘silver bullets’ or fads, slogans and meaningless mantras has nothing to do with learning. Neither is there anything of value in saying nothing really well. One can be entertained and watch ‘bells and whistles’ but without some effect of change, there is no learning.

Learning must involve movement, and is not static. Learning is not about data transfer or data memorization. What Freier called ‘banking’ (2001 Pedagogy of Freedom). Information in and ‘withdrawals’ of information out is neither learning nor education. Learning is a dialectical process that engages and ‘upbuilds persons’. One cannot talk about the notion of learning or education without a clear definition of personhood. This is why ‘artificial intelligence’ is called ‘artificial’. Humans are much more than the shifting of algorithms and behaviorist receptacles for data. In order for learning to be learning it must transfer to how humans live in the world and with others, this is the ethic of education and learning.

The official launch of the Tackling Risk is set for Fremantle on 5 September 4.30 pm at the Flying Angels Club. The launch is preceded by a free 3 hour workshop conducted by Roy and Rob. To book your place email Roy here: or show up for the launch at 4.30pm and enjoy the conversations, drinks and networking with fellow travellers in tackling risk.