Health and safety: teaching law, educating for prevention

Abstract

The teaching of law to non-lawyers can involve an unreceptive audience, particularly when the subject is health and safety. The author works with prospective rural practice chartered surveyors who are likely to be professionally involved with the two highest risk working environments in the UK : construction 1 and agriculture. 2 Unlike construction, the agricultural industry has failed to reduce annual fatalities in the past quarter of a century and continues to account for around 20% of workplace deaths, whilst employing under 2% of the workforce. 3 This paper explores the use of court cases, as an introduction to studies, to pique student interest, enhance legal skills and, importantly, to attempt to influence lifelong behaviour for those with future responsibilities in these areas. Students are also exposed to the field work of the Health and Safety Executive. The paper sets out some of the issues and experiences of teaching health and safety law to non-law students, outlines the cases used (for the 2011/12 cohort) and reviews the responses to preliminary research ascertaining student attitudes and understanding of the area before and after teaching.

Management commitment and its impact on occupational health and safety improvement: a case of iron, steel and metal manufacturing industries

“…These are the constructs required by the organization in its safety policies and strategy issues to minimize the prevalence of OHS. Similar studies showed that strategy issues in an organization motivate managers to formulate safety guidelines and procedures (De Silva, 2012;De Silva et al, 2018;EY and Y, 2015;Iavicoli et al, 2011;KUO et al, 2009;Machfudiyanto et al, 2017;Milgate et al, 2002;Tang et al, 2011).…”

Using the Socratic method and case law to engage and develop non-law students (undergraduates, postgraduates, work-based apprentices and CPD delegates).

“…Having explored using case law as a base in the past (de Silva, 2012) this paper considers the use of a form of the Socratic method with the intention of engaging student interest, enhancing legal skills and engendering an understanding of the importance of both the law and the transferability of legal studies and skills.…”

“…This paper develops previous work on issues raised when teaching law to, in particular, non-law students (de Silva, 2012;2013;. Having decided to trial a more structured variation of the usual student questioning which would take place in tutorials, a consideration of the development, use and purpose of the Socratic method has been conducted in order that a deeper understanding of the method's origins and varied usage informs the form of implementation and most beneficial use with current property students.…”

Pedagogy in Universiti Teknologi MARA (UiTM): Teaching and Learning Civil Procedure II

“…Developing and improving the quality of teachinglearning requires explaining the current situation and identifying the challenges and problems and its strengths (Ahmady & Khani, 2022). The "law school" approach, as is therefore clearly evident, in particular: the students will engage in a high volume of reading; where, a wide range of topics must be covered in limited detail, and where nature of the subject has, a very practical aspect (De Silva, 2012).…”