TEACHING MINERS: BREAKING THE BARRIERS TO LEARNING 

Elaine T. Cullen 

Spokane Research Laboratory, National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, 

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Spokane, Washington, USA 

ecullen@cdc.gov

ABSTRACT 

Miners, like many skilled blue-collar workers, are not traditional learners. They have not always been 

successful in classroom-type settings, preferring to learn on the job in a hands-on environment. U.S. law 

requires that miners have a minimum of 8 hours of safety training annually, plus 40 hours for underground

miners and 24 hours for surface miners when they enter the industry. However, miners rarely view this 

training time positively. In fact, it has been called “safety jail” by many, who regard it as a time to get a little 

extra sleep. 

While mining has become far safer in the past 100 years, it is still a dangerous occupation. The Office for Mine 

Safety and Health Research, a part of the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH), has 

funded a project for the past 4 years to address this challenge. The purpose of the research was to find a way to

develop effective safety training for these people. 

Miners are born story tellers. They share “near miss” 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 that it embraces. Stories, it seems, are a way to get safety messages across to miners, especially

inexperienced ones, and using older, wiser miners in these stories is an obvious choice. This paper will discuss 

how a series of training videos was 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 part of the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health 

(NIOSH), began conducting regional stakeholder meetings in the mining industry when it joined NIOSH in 

1997. Participants at these meetings were selected for their expertise and experience in different sectors of 

mining. They were asked to identify problems for researchers to consider in their work so that the research

being done would meet the needs of the industry. 

One of the issues identified repeatedly over the years was the need for high-quality, effective training materials 

that could be used both in training new miners and in annual safety training. Safety professionals were 

concerned that as the older, more experienced miners began to retire and leave the industry, the traditional 

method used to train new hires ─pairing them with expert miners─would no longer be possible. In addition, 

more women were entering the field, as well as workers for whom English was a second language. Clearly, 

training miners was becoming more complex as the demographics of the industry changed. Trainers believed

the situation was critical, and in 1998, a project was funded at SRL to develop and evaluate effective safety 

training for the mining industry.

In 1998, the NIOSH Pittsburgh Research Laboratory was producing excellent training materials for coal

miners, including many that used stories to teach. Because of limited resources and a desire not to duplicate

this work, SRL made the decision to focus on training for noncoal miners, with an emphasis on mining 

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situations in the western United States. While it is true that there are many similarities between coal mining 

and metal/nonmetal mining, these two broad segments of the mining industry have very different occupational 

cultures. Most of the materials discussed in this paper are applicable to both, but they were specifically 

designed for use in hard-rock or aggregate mining operations. 

APPROACH 

Miners are not traditional learners. Their work environment is dangerous and very physical, requiring them to

maintain a constant state of awareness about possible dangers and the ability to react quickly to changes in 

work conditions. They learn their trade in a master-apprentice relationship, and most of what they learn is onthe-job training. As adult learners, they fit the pattern defined by Knowles (Knowles et al., 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, and 

• 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 or not, if they believe they are learning something valuable,

and if they are enjoying the experience. The key to meeting these needs for mine safety training, 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 Mining Act of 1977 mandated that all coal and metal/nonmetal miners

receive safety training before beginning work in the mines, as well as annually thereafter. This certainly

created a training opportunity, but did little to provide either the materials or the training methods that trainers

needed. 

The approach used in this project was first to 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 selected for 

training development changed. A list of “critical issues” was produced by the group and included such things

as handling explosives, installing ground supports, and working around mobile equipment. These issues 

generally were in areas where training materials were either nonexistent or outdated. 

The mining industry in the United States is regulated by the Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA),

which has kept a very comprehensive database of accident statistics since 1977, when the the 1969 Mine 

Safety and Health Act was amended to include metal/nonmetal mines as well as coal mines. This database,

accessible through the MSHA Website at www.msha.gov, is an invaluable source of information on what 

kinds of accidents are happening in the mining industry, what miners are doing at the time of the accidents,

what kinds of injuries they are sustaining, and numerous other variables. The MSHA Accident/Injury database, 

which also includes narrative descriptions of the accidents, was “mined” for information on major accident 

categories at the beginning of each new training project. This information was then compared to the issues

identified by the technical advisory group, and the subjects for new training materials were selected based on

severity of the problem and detailed data on what exactly was happening to miners because of it. The issues

developed by the advisory group and the information in the MSHA database provided the content categories 

for the training, but the truly critical piece was to design the method by which the topics would be introduced. 

If training materials are going to be truly effective, they must not only include accurate content, they must

work within the culture of the prospective learners. It was considered crucial to the success of the project to 

match the training materials to the mining culture in order to improve chances of being effective. Culture is a 

difficult thing to identify. Blue-Collar Aristocrats (LeMasters, 1975) introduces the reader to the world of 

skilled blue-collar workers in an urban factory setting and allows us to observe them as they socialize in their 

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favorite bar and discuss their cultural norms and values. Mining has a culture that is uniquely its own but

shares many common values with other skilled blue-collar trades. Much has been written about mining culture,

including Roaring Camp: The Social World of the California Gold Rush (Johnson, 2000), Saloons in the Old

West (Erdoes, 1979), Fire In the Hole: The Untold Story of Hard Rock Miners (Dolph, 1994), and dozens of 

others. The authors unearth many themes about mining culture, and most reveal miners to be fiercely

independent, hard-working, hard-playing, and distrustful of “outsiders.” Finding ways to get these people to

participate willingly in their own training was a challenge. 

The idea of using narrative, or story-telling, as a teaching technique in this project developed gradually.

Research has shown that stories can be very powerful. Slater claims that stories─

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 consequences 

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 often viewed as an impossible task. Simmons believes that stories are “the oldest tool of 

influence in human history” (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 the interactions that would accompany it. While we may

associate story-telling with entertaining children, MacDonald (1993) arguesthat “The adult’ssense ofstory 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 that the current research on adult learning theory supports storytelling 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 (1994) 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.” Cole has researched the role of story-telling and its relationship to training. He states that “A

universal problem in education is the matter of translating socially relevant information into information that is 

personally relevant” (1997). U.S. laws pertaining to mining (U.S. Code of Federal Regulations, 1977) require

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 miners.

Simmons (2001) believes that stories are an effective way to reach learners, stating “Teaching stories help us 

make sense of new skills in meaningful ways. You never teach a skill that doesn’t have a reason why” (p. 18).

Changing the behavior of adults is not a simple task. Cranton (1994) discusses “transformative learning” (the

primary objective of safety training) and maintains that true transformative learning occurs through critical 

self-reflection, when learners revise old assumptions and develop new assumptions, beliefs, and ways of

seeing the world that change their behavior (p. 4). Critical self-reflection, however, may be difficult to achieve

in an 8-hour safety training class. Stories can provide shortcuts to this type of learning. Parkin (1998) discusses

the power of stories and their ability to reach us at different levels. She quotes Neuhauser (1993), a corporate 

trainer, this way:

Stories allow a person to feel and see the information as well as factually understand it. . .because you

‘hear’ the information factually, visually, and emotionally. It is more likely to be imprinted on your brain 

in a way that sticks with you longer, with very little effort on your part. (Parkin, 1998) 

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MacDonald reinforces this theme with a lyrical story of her own. “ ‘I have learned,’ said the

Philosopher, ‘that the head does not hear anything until the heart has listened, and that what the heart 

knows today the head will understand tomorrow.’ ” (1993). 

When the first video (Handling Explosives in Modern Mines) was released in 1999, feedback from the industry

was enthusiastic. It captured the essence of mining, we were told, and didn’t talk down to miners or treat them

with disrespect. And as the videos began to come out, a lively competition developed among the mines and

miners to see who would be 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 sites and people as

possible. 

To date, eight videos have been produced by SRL. Two of them, Hidden 

Scars (Cullen, 2001b) and You Are My Sunshine (Cullen, 2002a), are 

documentary-style stories of a fatal accident and a major mining disaster, 

respectively. The other six provide training on specific areas of mining

and use story-telling to assist the learning. These videos include─

• Handling Explosives in Modern Mines (Cullen, 1998)

• Preventing Rock Falls in Underground Mines (Miller, 1999) 

• Miner Mike Saves the Day (Cullen, 2000) 

• Hazards in Motion (Cullen, 2001a) 

• Zen and the Art of Rock Bolting (Cullen, 2002b) 

• 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) discussthe

role mentoring, or the master-apprentice relationship, has as 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 in 

order to take advantage of the credibility and legitimacy that the expert miners have earned. 

Video was the format chosen for development of training materials because of its ability to capture both people 

and stories visually. While it could be argued that other media, such as DVD, CD’s, or Web-based training 

were more flexible, an informal survey of mining industry customers revealed that these media were not 

widely used, but video was. Mines are 

located where minerals are found and are 

often in remote locations. Access to

satellite service or high-speed Internet 

lines is rare for these operations, so it was 

decided to provide the stories in a format 

that was immediately useable. The 

digitally shot footage used to create

videos could also be raw material for 

eventually creating DVD’s, CD’s, and 

Web-based learning, leaving those 

options open for the future.

A commercial production studio was 

contracted to provide the technical

expertise and equipment that would 

assure the footage was the highest quality 

possible. The project relied heavily on a Filming video footage for Hazards in Motion

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collaborative relationship with the mining industry. For the videos to be seen as realistic and credible, it would

be necessary for operating mines to provide locations, miners to act in the videos, equipment and other props

for the video shoots, and on-site expertise and support. This required an act of faith on the part of the industry,

because we are a Federal agency, and many miners and operators openly stated their distrust of “the Feds.” 

Scripts were developed at SRL and provided to mine safety professionals to check for accuracy and 

thoroughness. Once shooting began, the miners involved were given minimal coaching on what to say, but 

were, rather, given the freedom to tell the stories as they wanted. 

When the project first started, we were concerned the miners would be unwilling to participate or cooperate. 

This certainly was not the case. Mining can be viewed as a fairly closed culture, with limited tolerance of 

“outsiders.” Information spreads rapidly within this culture, primarily because many of the miners have 

“tramped,” or moved to work at other mines when the one at which they were employed was either

temporarily or permanently shut down. Over the years, many of the older miners have gotten to know each 

other and stay in touch. Thus, the word spread quickly through the Western mining industry that NIOSH was 

producing videos and that it was doing a good job. Miners seemed to enjoy seeing their old buddies in the 

videos, and many contacted us asking what they needed to do to be a “movie star.” The miners used as actors

provided suggestions, ideas, stories, and generally whatever assistance they could to make the videos 

entertaining, factual, and educational. They cooperated fully in the development of the videos, which added

greatly to the credibility of the training. 

The videos were never released until they had been thoroughly reviewed by the technical advisory team and

corrections or additions made. When it was time to release the videos, the world premier for each was

generally held in towns near the mines where filming took place and the miners involved were invited as

honored guests. Each “actor” was given his own copy of the video, as well as a portrait taken at some point 

during the shooting. The miners were encouraged to invite friends and family members to the premier and to

celebrate a job well done. 

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. Four of the videos have earned national awards.

Recognition and sheer demand, however, are not the only indicators of effectiveness, so in 2001 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). For each video, a pre-test and post-test were

developed for trainees, as well as a questionnaire for trainers. Telephone interviews, face-to-face interviews,

and e-mail feedback were also used to gather data from both the targeted audience (miners) and the end users

(trainers). 

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 were─

• Quality. The videos were judged to be excellent, both with respect to quality of footage and content. 

• Credibility. The videos are all shot in real mines, using real miners and real situations that the trainees can 

identify with. It was also mentioned that the videos showed respect to miners and did not talk down to

them. 

• Content. The videos present a lot of information, but do it in a way that miners can relate to and learn 

from.

• Effectiveness. Themes that are presented in the videos are important to both new miners and experienced 

miners, and because the videos are entertaining to watch, trainees pay attention to the messages in them.

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• 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 in the narratives 

helped touch the hearts of the trainees. 

Ted and Slick, heros of Aggregate 

Safety for the Safety Impaired 

The video Zen and the Art of Rock Bolting (Cullen, 2002) was 

reviewed for effectiveness using evaluation tools quite different 

from those used to evaluate the first five videos (Fein, 2003). The

research team determined that pre- and post-viewing multiple-choice

or true-and-false tests were not the best way to gather information 

from miners. In addition to being relatively easy to guess, they did 

not honor the past experiences and knowledge of the trainees.

Consequently, the evaluation instruments for Zen depended on openended questions asked both before and after viewing to see if there 

had been a change in the knowledge base and to answer (1) how

effectively did the video capture the wisdom and experience of a

master miner? and (2) how effectively did the video provide

information to both new and experienced miners? 

Results showed that the Zen video did, in fact, capture the master 

miner effectively. Having him explain how to do things made the

lesson much more vivid to inexperienced miners, as well as

reinforcing prior knowledge in older miners. In answering the 

question about whether they would like to work with or be trained by

master miner Jim Mortensen, an overwhelming majority said “yes,” that he obviously knew what he was doing 

and conveyed that information well. 

“Effectiveness” of training materials can be measured in many different ways. It is not rational to ask how

many accidents were prevented as a result of having miners watch the videos, because it is impossible to 

isolate that training from all other variables present in the mining environment. It is probably more appropriate 

to ask how effective the users (the safety trainers) think the videos are. Their criteria will include such things 

as willingness of the miners to attend safety training, attitudes 

about the topics they’ve seen, retention of the stories, etc. 

One anecdotal situation deserves to be mentioned. SRL has been

asked by numerous mines to replace the training videos after they

have been shown. It seems that the miners are stealing them from 

the training rooms and taking them home to show their families. 

This, we have been told, has never happened before with other

training materials. 

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 so

that they can successfully work in their careers without disabling 

injuries. The videos produced at SRL have become valuable tools

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

experts, and realistic locations and situations has made them both 

popular and useful in the industry’s goal to produce needed

minerals as safely as possible. By relating the training stories to

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real-life situations and people, and by respecting the work experiences of the workers who view them, the

NIOSH videos are seen as effective in changing the attitudes and behaviors of an occupational culture that has

been considered quite resistant to change. 

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