Abstract
Apart from deliberate deaths or some deaths associated with transport to or from a program, counterfactual analysis of incidents shows capable individuals responsible for a program could prevent most outdoor education deaths. This chapter summarises what is required of organisations and individuals to take all reasonable fatality prevention measures. Fatality prevention requires knowledge of past fatal incidents, prevention-focussed knowledge of programs, locations, conditions, and activities, and monitoring of precautions. Usually it entails expert supervision of young people in the outdoors. It requires prevention to be an overriding priority, and could incur costs or cause inconvenience. Fatality prevention poses no threat to outdoor education overall, but it could require some programs to be modified or cancelled. This chapter lists seven priorities for fatality prevention in outdoor education, and discusses some limitations to case-based prevention. Fatality prevention is subject to the overall competence of individuals and effectiveness of organisations. It is constrained and enabled by the quality and availability of case reports; the chapter concludes with a discussion of the role of those who work in the outdoor education field in producing and reproducing case-based knowledge. In particular, future fatality prevention must contend with organisational tendencies to suppress information in order to protect reputations.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
Some deaths have been linked to physical abuse, for example Kutz and O’Connell (2007).
- 2.
For example, the legal minimum drinking age in Australia is 18, in the USA 21.
References
Bailie, M. (2004). Lessons learned from Stainforth Beck. Retrieved from http://web.archive.org/web/20070808221214/http://www.aala.org.uk:80/guidance_details.php/pArticleHeadingID=163
Bailie, M. (1996). Risk assessments, safety statements and all that Guff. Journal of Adventure Education and Outdoor Leadership, 13(3), 6–7.
Bailie, M. (2005). Competent people versus copious paper. Horizons, 29(Spring), 30–33.
Bailie, M. (2006). Risk assessments, safety statements, and all that …. Horizons, 36(Winter), 13–15.
Brookes, A. (2015). Foundation myths and the roots of adventure education in the Anglosphere. In B. Humberstone, H. Prince, & K. Henderson (Eds.), International handbook of outdoor studies (pp. 11–19). London/New York: Routledge.
Brookes, A. (2006). Outdoor education safety guidelines and unfamiliar environments. A hidden curriculum? Canadian Journal of Environmental Education, 11, 195–206.
Casey, B., Jones, R., & Hare, T. (2008). The adolescent brain. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, 1124, 111–126. https://doi.org/10.1196/annals.1440.010
de Holan, P. M., & Phillips, N. (2004). Remembrance of things past? The dynamics of organizational forgetting. Management Science, 50(11), 1603–1613.
Fischhoff, B. (2008). Assessing adolescent decision-making competence. Developmental Review, 28(1), 12–28.
Hey, I. (2005). Safety at work. Manchester, UK: British Mountaineering Council. Retrieved from https://www.thebmc.co.uk/safety-at-work
International Labour Organization. (2017). Safety and health at work. Retrieved from http://www.ilo.org/global/topics/safety-and-health-at-work/lang--en/index.htm
Johnson, C., & Gilmoure, H. (2009, July 1). Foreign student death details suppressed. The Sydney Morning Herald. Retrieved from http://www.smh.com.au/national/foreign-student-death-details-suppressed-20090630-d3sg.html
Kruger, J., & Dunning, D. (1999). Unskilled and unaware of it: How difficulties in recognizing one’s own incompetence lead to inflated self-assessments. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 77(6), 1121–1134.
Kutz, G. D., & O’Connell, A. (2007). Residential treatment programs. Concerns regarding abuse and death in certain programs for troubled youth (GAO-08-146T). Retrieved from Washington, DC. http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d08146t.pdf
North, C., & Brookes, A. (2017). Case-based teaching of fatal incidents in outdoor education teacher preparation courses. Journal of Adventure Education and Outdoor Learning, 17(3), 192–202. https://doi.org/10.1080/14729679.2017.1308873
Protect Students Abroad. (2016). Telling the stories. Retrieved from http://protectstudentsabroad.org/telling-the-stories/
Protect Students Abroad. (2017). Blog. Retrieved from http://protectstudentsabroad.org/blog/
Reyna, V. F., & Farley, F. (2006). Risk and rationality in adolescent decision making: Implications for theory, practice, and public policy. Psychological Science in the Public Interest, 7(1), 1–44.
Salveson, J. (2013). I was once a victim too. Notre Dame Magazine. University of Notre Dame, Notre Dame, IN. Retrieved from https://magazine.nd.edu/news/i-was-once-a-victim-too/
Steinberg, L. (2008). A social neuroscience perspective on adolescent risk-taking. Developmental Review, 28(1), 78–106. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.dr.2007.08.002
World Health Organization. (2014). Global report on drowning: Preventing a leading killer. Geneva: World Health Organization. Retrieved from http://www.who.int/iris/handle/10665/143893
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2018 Springer International Publishing AG, part of Springer Nature
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Brookes, A. (2018). Preventing Fatal Incidents. In: Preventing Fatal Incidents in School and Youth Group Camps and Excursions. International Explorations in Outdoor and Environmental Education. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-89882-7_8
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-89882-7_8
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-89880-3
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-89882-7
eBook Packages: EducationEducation (R0)