Problem Based Learning as a Cultural Tool for Health and Safety Learning in a Multi-national Company

The general background of this study is an interest in how cultural tools contribute to structuring learning activities. The specific interest is to explore how such tools co-determine employees’ problem solving actions in health, safety and environment (HSE) training activities in a multi-national company context. Theoretically, the research takes its point of departure in a socio-cultural perspective on the role of cultural tools in learning, and in a complementary interest in the role of communicative framing of learning activities.
In the research reported here, the focus is on how employees learn to organise HSE actions in the context of using Problem Based Learning (PBL) applied as a cultural tool.
More specifically, our interest is in how PBL promotes adult learning by drawing on learners’ experience and involving them in reflective and social processes in the given context.
The empirical material consists of video and interview documentation of employees participating in HSE training applying PBL. Interaction analysis is used as an approach/method. The aim of interaction analysis is to identify how the participants use resources in the complex social and material context they (inter)act in. An assumption in interaction analysis is that verified observations are the best empirical material for generating analytical knowledge about learning.
Expected findings argue how PBL to a significant degree frames the HSE learning practices. Furthermore, PBL can be used to structure problem solving through participation and negotiation. In this way, problem solving emerges through experience situated in specific practices rather than through abstract knowledge.
The practice included in this research is a multi-national production company, which over a period of extensive growth and several organisational changes, has not managed to secure adequate safety culture. Safety implementation processes traditionally involve a large amount of training; which is associated with reduced productivity for the time spent on training. Therefore, the company in question wants to find ways to implement more efficient HSE training programmes applicable in different cultures.