The Fishing Vessel Stability Education Program: An Informed Blueprint For Program Design

A fishing vessel capsizes and the call for stability education resumes, suggesting that past and current training programs are not contributing significantly to education and prevention of capsizings. This paper introduces an industry driven educational program where fishermen’s prior experience is central to their learning. Instructional design is problem based and includes a hands on model. The program, informed by research literature on learning, is described within the framework of an adult education planning model, including epistemology, needs assessment, learning outcome, instructional design, facilitation and evaluation. It was recently awarded the Canadian Society of Safety Engineers Annual Achievement Award. Pedagogical similarities with the Carl Wieman Science Education Initiative, an innovative program to reshape science education are noted. The paper concludes with a brief discussion of implications and limitations.