Welcome Guest! The IOSH forums are a free resource to both members and non-members. Login or register to use them

Postings made by forum users are personal opinions. IOSH is not responsible for the content or accuracy of any of the information contained in forum postings. Please carefully consider any advice you receive.

Notification

Icon
Error

2 Pages<12
Options
Go to last post Go to first unread
O'Donnell54548  
#41 Posted : 14 January 2021 18:21:22(UTC)
Rank: Super forum user
O'Donnell54548

Originally Posted by: Wailes900134 Go to Quoted Post
Would there be a specific body for the education and training fraternity?

IOSH have done a lot lately to improve the 'competence' level in the grading system. However there has been no real work done on approving trainers, beyond their IOSH grade which is based on their abilities as a practitioner.

There has always been a belief in our profession that a qualified H&S advisor is also, by achieving a practitioner qualification, a 'competent' H&S trainer. In my experience this is rarely the case.

I have spent many years as both a practitioner and trainer, and they are very different disciplines. One company I worked for had a team of H&S advisors who were expected to deliver the full portfolio of H&S training to managers and staff. However no one knew what a training needs analysis was, there were no lesson plans and no clear learning aims and objectives. A poor trainer is worse than no training!

This is why I think that IOSH should spend some time at looking at encouraging their members, as part of their grade progression, should also be assessed on the abilities as trainers and that those who decide to go down the training provider route should be recognised by their professional body. 

thanks 1 user thanked O'Donnell54548 for this useful post.
Roundtuit on 14/01/2021(UTC)
Wailes900134  
#42 Posted : 14 January 2021 22:47:54(UTC)
Rank: Forum user
Wailes900134

Yes, I agree there is a fundamental difference between someone who has to share some specific knowledge from their area of expertise as part of their broader practitioner role, and those who’s contribution is almost if not all training based. I suspect some of the historical “closed shop demarcation” was as much a commercial thought as one of quality control too. Perhaps as IOSH Services Ltd is now an organisation of scale this should be reflected in specific routes for trainers too.
peter gotch  
#43 Posted : 15 January 2021 11:23:17(UTC)
Rank: Super forum user
peter gotch

There is the other side of the coin. Trainers who think that they can read a code of regulations and provide effective training with little, if any, experience of the topic. This means that they may find it very difficult to provide useful answers when someone they are training asks a question about real life scenarios. P

thanks 1 user thanked peter gotch for this useful post.
Dazzling Puddock on 15/01/2021(UTC)
O'Donnell54548  
#44 Posted : 18 January 2021 17:40:30(UTC)
Rank: Super forum user
O'Donnell54548

Originally Posted by: peter gotch Go to Quoted Post

There is the other side of the coin. Trainers who think that they can read a code of regulations and provide effective training with little, if any, experience of the topic. This means that they may find it very difficult to provide useful answers when someone they are training asks a question about real life scenarios. P

Firstly, you are confusing trainers with tutors, a common misconception and evidence of the point I am making with regards to practitioners and those who provide training. I have lost count of how many job descriptions I have seen for trainer which are in fact for tutors.

Trainers do not work in classrooms, they work with people in the workplace (for example training someone to operate a piece of machinery) and would be better referred to as a coach. Tutors (such as the sort who probably taught you on your NEBOSH course) are delivering classroom led educational courses to groups. I am sure that you were provided with a whole host of real life examples from past events, but nothing specific to your workplace.

Perhaps now you know the difference you can see why in our schools they employ teachers to educate in such subjects as history even though they cannot answer any questions with real-life experience?

Wailes900134  
#45 Posted : 18 January 2021 23:22:37(UTC)
Rank: Forum user
Wailes900134

Originally Posted by: O'Donnell54548 Go to Quoted Post

confusing trainers with tutors, a common misconception and evidence of the point I am making with regards to practitioners and those who provide training.

Over the length of this thread there appears to be some confusion for sure (and i'm not exempting myself from that). It appears a recurring challenge though is where we fit those who are pretty much totally in the tutor situation (where it would make sense that a professional body of "educators" define their competence to educate rather than the owners of any given syllabus) but they solely provide ISL products and are therefore shackled by the historic IOSH membership rule.

 

Edited by user 18 January 2021 23:23:58(UTC)  | Reason: Typo

thanks 1 user thanked Wailes900134 for this useful post.
O'Donnell54548 on 19/01/2021(UTC)
O'Donnell54548  
#46 Posted : 19 January 2021 15:18:02(UTC)
Rank: Super forum user
O'Donnell54548

Originally Posted by: Wailes900134 Go to Quoted Post
Originally Posted by: O'Donnell54548 Go to Quoted Post

confusing trainers with tutors, a common misconception and evidence of the point I am making with regards to practitioners and those who provide training.

Over the length of this thread there appears to be some confusion for sure (and i'm not exempting myself from that). It appears a recurring challenge though is where we fit those who are pretty much totally in the tutor situation (where it would make sense that a professional body of "educators" define their competence to educate rather than the owners of any given syllabus) but they solely provide ISL products and are therefore shackled by the historic IOSH membership rule.

 

Totally agree, and is the basis of my argument for a membership grading system specific to trainers. This would not prevent someone who wanted to from achieving grades both as a provider of training/instruction/tutor and H&S Practice.

peter gotch  
#47 Posted : 19 January 2021 15:26:09(UTC)
Rank: Super forum user
peter gotch

O'Donnell - point well made, but this thread is in the "Career Forum", so it was easy to think about classroom type teaching, or tutoring for e.g an NVQ or NCRQ for the development of an HSE professional.

For what it's worth, I was spared NEBOSH, instead doing a Diploma at Aston Uni. The Professor is on record on the internet as recognising that his attempt to get his students to work out structural engineering equations from first principles was never likely to work. 

So, I needed to know that a bent scaffold tube used as a "standard" i.e upright is dangerous. END OF. I really didn't need to know what the reduction in safe working load was if there was a 10 degree bend in it. A few years later, a TRAINER (who did TUTOR us) showed me how it was very easy to simply replace that damaged standard. Also pointed out the very useful information that if I stood back from the scaffold and the standard didn't look vertical then it was outside the tolerance permitted by the relevant British Standard - no need to get out instrumention - the human eye was quite sufficient to make the determination.

O'Donnell54548  
#48 Posted : 20 January 2021 16:58:10(UTC)
Rank: Super forum user
O'Donnell54548

Originally Posted by: peter gotch Go to Quoted Post

O'Donnell - point well made, but this thread is in the "Career Forum", so it was easy to think about classroom type teaching, or tutoring for e.g an NVQ or NCRQ for the development of an HSE professional.

For what it's worth, I was spared NEBOSH, instead doing a Diploma at Aston Uni. The Professor is on record on the internet as recognising that his attempt to get his students to work out structural engineering equations from first principles was never likely to work. 

So, I needed to know that a bent scaffold tube used as a "standard" i.e upright is dangerous. END OF. I really didn't need to know what the reduction in safe working load was if there was a 10 degree bend in it. A few years later, a TRAINER (who did TUTOR us) showed me how it was very easy to simply replace that damaged standard. Also pointed out the very useful information that if I stood back from the scaffold and the standard didn't look vertical then it was outside the tolerance permitted by the relevant British Standard - no need to get out instrumention - the human eye was quite sufficient to make the determination.

Not sure what your point is? I am sure that your Professor could have pointed out to you the scenario that your Trainer did, that while looking at a scaffold "and the standard did'nt look vertical" there was something wrong??? As a matter of fact I would have thought that any reasonable person could. 

peter gotch  
#49 Posted : 21 January 2021 13:18:25(UTC)
Rank: Super forum user
peter gotch

O'Donnell

My point was the Professor was dealing in academia. The trainer dealt with practicalities.

The Professor could have calculated the reduction in Safe Working Load if the standard was 5, 10 or 20 degrees from the vertical.

From the trainer's perspective this would be completely irrelevant. If you could stand back and see that the standard didn't LOOK vertical it was not acceptable and needed to be supplemented and then removed.

In practice, if the scaffold was big enough to have say 50 standards on an elevation, having one somewhere in the middle that was 5, 10 or 20 degrees from the vertical would not be liable to result in scaffold collapse. [The chance of a substantial scaffold collapsing due to a single defect would be extremely remote]. But anyone doing an inspection of said scaffold should have been saying "Sort it".

"Sorting it" was so simple that nobody would start arguing about what was "reasonably practicable".

A different time, money and effort equation to e.g. deciding that a tunnel guard on a machine was not such as to prevent finger access to the danger points and thence needed to be altered in one or more dimensions. 

O'Donnell54548  
#50 Posted : 21 January 2021 13:40:05(UTC)
Rank: Super forum user
O'Donnell54548

peter gotch

Then if I get you right your complaint is that the professor taught you something you did'nt need to know?? or am I missing something?

peter gotch  
#51 Posted : 21 January 2021 16:17:18(UTC)
Rank: Super forum user
peter gotch

O'Donnell

If you like, but particularly if you read my comment in the context of what I wrote six days ago.

"Trainers who think that they can read a code of regulations and provide effective training with little, if any, experience of the topic. This means that they may find it very difficult to provide useful answers when someone they are training asks a question about real life scenarios".

You could replace the word "training" with "tutoring". But in terms of getting e.g. European Qualifications Framework certification that tutoring is called training.

O'Donnell54548  
#52 Posted : 21 January 2021 18:28:40(UTC)
Rank: Super forum user
O'Donnell54548

It appears from your comment that you are of the opinion that "Those who can do, and those who can't teach" and yet no one can truly understand a subject until they can explain it, in simple terms, to another. 

peter gotch  
#53 Posted : 21 January 2021 18:47:58(UTC)
Rank: Super forum user
peter gotch

That's a very sweeping assumption and it is NOT my opinion.

There are very few experts in a subject, who "truly understand a subject" who can "explain [the entirety of] it, in simple terms, to another" unless that "another" is already well up their learning curve on that particular subject.

What we can hope for is for those who teach/tutor to have sufficient understanding as to be able to "explain" the subject broadly "in simple terms, to another". 

However, there are also those who make a living from training people in subjects where they have little experience. 

O'Donnell54548  
#54 Posted : 21 January 2021 20:01:57(UTC)
Rank: Super forum user
O'Donnell54548

No offence intended by my "sweeping assumption".

However I stick to my comment that no one can truly understand a subject, even the most complex subject, until they can explain it in simple terms to another. And this goes much further than being able to say "I remember whem", "I once saw", "in my day" and "this is how we have always done it". 

Users browsing this topic
2 Pages<12
You cannot post new topics in this forum.
You cannot reply to topics in this forum.
You cannot delete your posts in this forum.
You cannot edit your posts in this forum.
You cannot create polls in this forum.
You cannot vote in polls in this forum.