TELL ME A STORY:

USING NARRATIVE TO TEACH SAFETY TO SKILLED BLUE-COLLAR WORKERS

By 

Elaine T. Cullen 

Spokane Research Laboratory, National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health 

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention 

ecullen@cdc.gov

ABSTRACT 

 Miners, like many skilled blue-collar workers, are 

not traditional learners. They have not generally been 

successful in classroom-type settings, preferring to 

learn on the job in a hands-on environment. U.S. 

miners are required to have annual safety training, but 

they rarely view this positively. In fact, it has been 

called “safety jail” by many of them, who regard it as a 

time to get a little extra sleep. The challenge then, was 

to find a way to develop effective safety training for 

these people, particularly in view of the fact that their 

work is among the most dangerous of all occupations. 

 Miners are born story tellers. They share “nearmiss” stories, stories about master miners they have 

known, and stories about how things used to be. These 

stories not only pass along information about what will 

happen if a miner fails to respect the mining environment, they also instruct listeners in the culture of 

mining and the values it embraces. Stories, it seems, 

are a way to get safety messages to miners, especially 

inexperienced ones, and using older, wiser miners in 

these stories is an obvious choice. This paper will 

discuss how the training videos created to get safety 

messages to miners were developed, how “master 

miners” and story lines were chosen, and how the 

resulting videos have been received in the mining 

industry. 

INTRODUCTION 

 The Spokane Research Laboratory (SRL), a 

division of the National Institute for Occupational 

Safety and Health (NIOSH), has been conducting 

stakeholder meetings within the mining industry for a 

number of years. Participants at these meetings are 

asked to identify problems for researchers to consider 

in their work. One of the issues that was identified 

repeatedly over the years was the need for highquality, effective training materials that could be used 

for both training new miners and annual refresher 

training. In 1998, a project was funded at SRL to 

develop and evaluate effective safety training for the 

mining industry. 

APPROACH 

 Miners are not traditional learners. As adult 

learners, they fit the pattern defined by Knowles 

(Knowles, Holton, & Swanson, 1998), in that they— 

• Need to know why they need to learn something, 

• Need training to be self-directed, 

• Need their training to relate to prior experience, 

• Must be ready to learn, 

• Must be motivated to learn. 

 Wlodowski (1985) further suggests that adults are 

motivated to learn if they believe they will be 

successful, if they think they have a choice in whether 

to learn, if they believe they are learning something 

valuable, and if they are enjoying the experience. The 

key to meeting these needs, it seemed, was to look 

closely at the mining culture for clues as to how to 

make learning fun, interesting, and relevant. 

 While it is true that U.S. miners are required to 

spend time in training classes, this does not guarantee 

that they will pay attention or learn anything. The 

approach used in this project was to first put together a 

group of industry safety professionals who would act 

as a technical advisory group. Membership in this 

group was loose and changed as the topics for training 

materials changed. A list of “critical issues” was 

developed, which included such things as handling 

explosives, installing ground supports, and working 

around mobile equipment. These issues provided the 

content for the training, but the truly critical piece was 

to design the method by which the topics would be 

introduced. 

 The idea of using narratives, or story-telling, as a 

teaching technique in this project developed gradually. 

Research has shown that stories can be very powerful. 

Slater says they— 

have substantial potential to influence behavior. It is 

difficult to consider another communication genre 

that can communicate beliefs, model behavior, teach 

skills, provide behavioral cues, and simulate conesquences of behaviors over time in as compelling and 

involving a fashion. (Slater, 2002) 

 Trying to change another person’s behavior (one of 

the primary objectives of safety training) without 
obtaining their buy-in is an impossible task. Simmons 

believes that stories are “the oldest tool of influence in

human history” (Simmons, 2001, p. xvii) and that they

can provide the trainer an effective way to “connect

people to what is important and to help them make 

sense of their world” (p. 29). In other words, stories

provide the learner with that critical “why should I 

care?” element. Lave and Wenger (1991) have taken 

this idea even further by stating that true learning does 

not take place in isolation, but rather in a social 

environment, with all of the interactions that would

accompany it. While we may associate story-telling 

with entertaining children, MacDonald (1993) argues 

that “The adult’s sense of story is fully developed, the

attention span is long, and adults prove eager listeners 

if you will take the time to seek out...tales we need to 

hear” (p. 57). It is clear the current research on adult

learning theory supports story-telling as an effective

strategy in training miners. 

Miners are story-tellers. One need only spend time

with them to observe how they interact with each other 

through story-telling. The stories they share may

provide information about “near misses” they have 

had, about master miners they have worked with, or

about someone they knew who made an error in

judgment and paid dearly for it. The role of the stories 

is complex, but Billett explains it like this:

“Developing learners’ conceptual understanding of

why things are done a certain way, and what would 

happen if they were not, is a key role...” (Billett, 1994,

p. 14). Henry Cole has researched the role of storytelling and its relationship to training. He states, “A 

universal prob-lem in education is the matter of

translating socially relevant information into

information that is personally relevant” (Cole, 1997, p. 

334). U.S. laws pertaining to (U.S. Code of Federal

Regulations, 1977) requires that miners be trained in

health and safety. This is the social relevance that

Cole makes reference to. The challenge is to comply

with the law and at the same time provide training that

is personally relevant to them. Only then will their

time be well spent, and their behavior changed. 

Video was the format chosen for development of

training materials. While it could be argued that other

media, such as DVD or CD’s, were more flexible, an

informal survey of mining industry customers revealed 

that these media were not widely used, but that the 

video format was common. The digitally shot footage

that would be used to create the videos could also be 

the raw material for eventually creating DVD’s and 

CD’s, and so left those options open for the future. A

commercial production studio was hired to provide the

technical expertise that would assure that the footage

was the highest quality possible. The project relied 

heavily on a collaborative relationship with the mining 

industry. Operating mines provided locations, miners 

to act in the videos, equipment and other props for the

video shoots. Scripts were developed at SRL and

provided to mine safety professionals who checked

them for accuracy and thoroughness. Once the 

shooting began on a project, the miners who were 

involved were given minimal coaching on what to say,

but rather were given the freedom to tell the stories as 

they wanted. 

When the project first started, researchers were 

concerned that miners would be unwilling to

participate or cooperate. This certainly was not the 

case. The videos were not released until they had been

thoroughly reviewed by the technical advisory team,

but when it came time to premier them, the location 

was generally in the towns near the mines where the 

videos were shot and the miners involved were invited

as honored guests. Each “actor” was given his own

copy of the video, as well as a portrait. They were

encouraged to invite friends and family members to the 

premier and to celebrate a job well done. 

As the videos began to come out, a lively 

competition developed among the mines and miners to 

see who was chosen to be in the next one. The

surprising dilemma was not reluctance on the part of

the industry to participate, but rather to find a way to

be fair and to include as many miners as possible. 

To date, eight videos have been produced by SRL.

Two of them, Hidden Scars (and You Are My Sunshine

(are documentary-style stories of a fatal accident and a

major mining disaster, respectively. The other six

provide training on specific areas of mining using 

story-telling to assist learning. These videos include— 
1. Handling Explosives in Underground Mines

(Cullen, 1998). 

2. Preventing Rock Falls in Underground Mines 

(Miller, 1999). 

3. Miner Mike Saves the Day (Cullen, 2000). 

4. Hazards in Motion (Cullen, 2001a). 

5. Zen and the Art of Rock Bolting (Cullen, 2001b). 

6. Aggregate Training for the Safety Impaired

(Cullen, 2003). 

In each of these videos, older, wiser miners observe 

younger, inexperienced miners performing unsafe acts

and mentor them by either telling them stories about

why this is not a good idea, or by introducing them to

other expert miners who show them the proper way to

do things. Camm and Cullen (2002) suggest that

mentoring, or the master-apprentice relationship, is the

primary method used in the mining industry to train

new workers. These videos, particularly Zen and the 

Art of Rock Bolting, use this mentoring technique to

take advantage of the credibility and legitimacy that 

the expert miners have earned. 

RESULTS 

The videos have been very well received in the 

mining industry. NIOSH has distributed over 7000

copies of the eight videos, with new requests coming

in daily. Sheer demand, however, is not the best

indicator of effectiveness, so a formal evaluative

process was established to gather data on whether

these videos really did make a positive difference in 

training. An independent team of researchers was

contracted to gather evaluative data on the first five

videos produced and to analyze these data for

information that would provide guidance for the

research project under which the videos were created

(Fein and Isaacson, 2001) . 

Five major themes emerged from the evaluative 

study. Safety professionals in the mining industry

generally viewed the videos very positively and were 

eager for more. Specifically, their comments

included— 

1. Quality. The videos were judged to be excellent

both with respect to quality of footage and content. 

2. Credibility. The videos were all shot in real 

mines, using real miners and real situations that

trainees can identify with. It was also mentioned that

the videos showed respect to miners and did not talk

down to them. 

3. Content. The videos present a lot of information,

but do it in a way that miners can relate to and learn 

from. 

4. Effectiveness. Themes presented in the videos

are important to both new and experienced miners, and

because the videos are entertaining to watch, trainees 

pay attention to the messages in them. 

5. Engaging nature. The videos use stories to make 

the information personally relevant to trainees. The 

videos were not viewed as boring, and the humor and

pathos included helped touch the hearts of the trainees. 

CONCLUSIONS 

Mining will continue to be a dangerous occupation,

particularly as easily won minerals are mined out. At

the same time, the mining workforce in the United 

States is aging. It is critical to the continuity of the 

industry that new workers be properly trained. The

videos produced at SRL have become valuable tools

for safety trainers. Their use of story-telling, credible 

experts, and realistic locations and situations have 

made them both popular and useful in the industry’s

goal to produce needed minerals as safely as possible. 

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