The best way to learn in safety is outside the safety bubble.
Listening or seeking learning about culture, ethics or linguistics in the safety cocoon is not just a waste of time but perpetuates the ignorance many Safety myths. The safety curriculum and the AIHS Body of Knowledge has nothing to do with an understanding of culture, ethics or language. Similarly, if one wants to learn about learning, safety is not the place to go for education.
Transdisciplinarity is about a disposition to accept and work across the disciplines and with over 4000 formal disciplines available from various institutions, you have a lot to choose from. Safety and risk management are such disciplines. The curriculum in both these disciplines is narrow, focused on regulation and systems.
Various approaches to working and learning with other disciplines is known as inter-disciplinarity (between) or multi-disciplinarity (layered). These approaches are selective and limited in approach. We see this in how some disciplines form a group to the exclusion of other disciplines. For example, in STEM (science, technology, engineering and maths) we see a group that anchors to the ideology of positivism to the exclusion of many disciplines in the Arts and Social Sciences.
In Transdisciplinary, there is a disposition to be open to knowing and learning across ALL disciplines including, thousands of non-formal disciplines that are not studied at institutions. Many aspects of life that are not measurable but helpful, not in institutions or focused on ‘assessment’ involve a sense of discipline. For example, the kind of knowing that comes from First Nations peoples is not learned in books or institutions. Much of this learning and knowing is experiential, phenomenal and unique. The non-measureable and non-formal disciplines are known as Poetics (not poetry).
In SPoR, we value the Transdisciplinary approach and give equal weighting to forms of knowing that STEM rejects. This is why so much of SPoR stands at odds with the ideology espoused in traditional safety. (eg. HOP). This is particularly necessary when faced with a wicked problem (https://safetyrisk.net/no-taming-or-fixing-wicked-problems/). Wicked problems like risk and safety cannot be ‘tamed’ or managed via ‘performance’. The complexities of culture cannot be ‘fixed’ or ‘managed’.
Sometimes a semiotic model can help in understanding (https://safetyrisk.net/a-model-for-transdisciplinarity-in-risk/) this discposition.
In SPoR, we give as much validity to understanding life through the rituals of a Hindu priest or a First Nations approach (https://safetyrisk.net/a-different-world-of-risk/) as to the myths of ‘scientific method’. Indeed, one should interrogate the other in an ethic-dialectic.
In SPoR, we don’t single out just one or two disciplines (eg. psychology or sociology) as if this will help tackle the wicked problems of risk, culture and safety. We need a much broader worldview than such a limiting approach.
I discuss some of these dynamics in a recent video:
Prof. Robert Long
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