Title: Incident data in enhancing school safety: an example from Finland

Authors: Eila Lindfors

Addresses: Department of Teacher Education, University of Turku, Rauma Campus, Seminaarinkatu 1, FI-26101 Rauma, Finland

Abstract: Safety and security is a multi-faced phenomenon that is an essential part of students' and staff's well-being at school, which is well documented as the main issue in a good learning environment. However, very little is known about incidents that happen at schools, but a catalogue of these incidents could serve as a learning tool for proactive management of the safety culture. Incidents occur in relation to physical, social, psychological and pedagogical factors. To develop a safety culture, there is need to record, monitor and analyse incidents (near-misses, accidents and injuries). There are no systematic procedures in regular use that would allow schools as organisations to learn from incidents and implement alterations to develop their safety culture. In the study of 168 incidents from three comprehensive schools in Finland, data were collected and monitored in a digital system. The incidents were categorised into physical, social, psychological and pedagogical categories. This paper gives prior knowledge of incidents in pedagogical category regarding what happened, where and to whom.

Keywords: incident analysis; near-miss case; injury; accident; safety management; school safety; proactive learning; safety culture; learning environment; Finland.

DOI: 10.1504/IJTMCP.2020.104895

International Journal of Telemedicine and Clinical Practices, 2020 Vol.3 No.3, pp.209 - 222

Received: 03 May 2019
Accepted: 24 Aug 2019

Published online: 05 Feb 2020 *

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