Model Curriculum for OSH Key to Becoming a Profession Article Summary Guidelines for Article Summaries/Critiques will provide an overall summary of the

Model Curriculum for OSH Key to Becoming a Profession Article Summary Guidelines for Article Summaries/Critiques

will provide an overall summary of the article and should be at least 2.0 pages, double spaced (at least 600 words). Use the APA Style Manual (6th Ed) for the critiques.

The review will include 3 headings: Article Summary, Article Critique and Article Reference.

• Article Summary – You can use this heading for the summary or you can use this as the main heading and use sub-headings. This is worth approximately 35% of the total.

• Article Critique – What did you think about the article? Was it easy to understand? Did the author(s) correctly interpret the data? Did the author(s) provide new information? This is the most important part of your effort. You have to tell me what was good about the article and what could be better. If you do not include a critique you lose approximately 35% of the total points for this assignment.

III. Article Reference – This should allow the reader to locate the article. It should include a properly formatted (via APA style) full citation. The Authors names go first (last name and initial), then the year of publication, then the title of the article. The title of the journal goes next and finally the issue number, volume number and page number. This is worth about 10% of the total points.

The summary/critique shall be typed and written in complete sentences. All written material will be assessed for content as well as neatness, spelling, and grammar.

Approximate point breakdown: Summary = 35%, Critique = 35% points, Article Reference = 10%, Section Headings and grammar = 20% Professional Issues
Peer-Reviewed
Model
Curriculum
for OSH
Key to Becoming a Profession
By Jim Ramsay and Wayne Hartz
A
ll professions start as occupations. Over
time, some develop into sovereign (i.e., mature, established) professions. The road map
to professionalization is well understood, although
there is no single route that all occupations take.
Several characteristics define professions: a common
In Brief
set of educational standards
•Some professions mature from ocuniformly adopted by acacupations into sovereign (established)
demic programs residing in inprofessions. Several well-accepted
stitutions of higher education;
characteristics define professions,
professional certifications; and
including education standards and
continuing professional eduoccupational closure.
cation processes, which are
•This article describes how a model
themselves closely coupled
curriculum was created and, from
to the education standards.
that, how a new set of standards was
In addition, established prodeveloped for the OSH discipline.
fessions have peer-reviewed
•The authors also explain that by
journals and conferences, a
leveraging the model curriculum and
common understanding and
subsequent set of education standards,
use of terms regarding job
a road map might be constructed
descriptions, and a code of
for professionalization of OSH that
professional ethics as well
includes occupational closure.
as mechanisms to enforce it.
Jim Ramsay, Ph.D., M.A., CSP, is professor of security studies,
coordinator of the Homeland Security program, and chair of the
Department of Politics, Security Studies and Business at University of
New Hampshire. He has nearly 20 years’ experience in public health,
emergency management, occupational safety, environmental health
and security. Ramsay served 4 years on the Board of Scientific Counselors and serves on the CDC/NIOSH Institutional Review Board
(IRB) as well as its Disaster Research IRB. He also served 6 years on
the ABET Inc. board of directors. He serves on the Education Standards committees for both International Society for Preparedness,
Resilience and Security, of which he is a cofounder and president,
and ASSE, where he also chairs the committee. Ramsay serves on
the editorial review boards for Homeland Security Affairs, Journal of
Homeland Security and Emergency Management, Journal of Homeland
Security Education and Journal of Human Security and Resilience. He
is author of Introduction to Homeland Security and Critical Issues in
40 ProfessionalSafety
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Lastly and most critical, mature disciplines require
occupational closure, which allows for professional
definition and provides barriers to entry.
Typically, the best mechanism to widely disseminate education standards is program-level,
recognized accreditation. However, with less than
7% of OSH programs accredited nationwide, this is
a noticeable omission in the requirements for professionalization in OSH. Accreditation seems most
successful if two factors exist simultaneously. First,
the discipline must have a credible set of standards, credible in that they are based in research,
policy and best practices, and viewed by consensus
of practitioners and academics as being appropriate. Second, occupational closure must exist to
enhance standards adoption by requiring all applicants to have graduated from an accredited academic program. Lacking occupational closure in
the OSH discipline results in education standards
that are not widely adopted.
The purpose of this article is twofold: 1) to
describe how a model curriculum was created
and, from that, a new set of standards was
developed for the OSH discipline; and 2) by
Homeland Security: A Casebook, as well as the forthcoming Foundations of Environmental Security: Integrating Resilience into National
Security, expected to be published in 2017. He is a professional
member of the Granite State Chapter, and a member of the Academics Practice Specialty.
Wayne Hartz, Ph.D., CSP, is associate professor in the Safety and
Occupational Health Applied Sciences program and as New Hampshire’s OSHA Consultation Project Manager at Keene State College,
Keene, NH. Prior to joining Keene State College, Hartz worked at
L.L. Bean Inc. for 15 years where, after starting as the company’s
first safety professional, he was corporate manager of employee
safety. Hartz holds a Ph.D. in Leadership and Change from Antioch
University. He is a professional member of the Granite State Chapter,
member of the Academics Practice Specialty, and a member of the
Educational Standards Committee.
iStock.com/thedafkish
leveraging the new model curriculum and subsequent set of education standards, how a road
map might be constructed for professionalization of the OSH discipline that includes occupational closure.
OSH Profession’s Perfect Storm
It is a time of unprecedented change for higher
education marked by reduced state funding, students consistently questioning the relative value of
a college degree, increasing and shifting employer
needs, and, in general, a more dangerous world
in terms of terrorism and organizations’ need for
emergency management expertise to work alongside safety and health expertise, all with increasing
healthcare costs and an aging workforce.
These circumstances, combined with shrinking
availability of qualified OSH professionals, employer confusion of how to define qualified OSH
professionals, lack of accreditation in most OSH
programs and lack of state regulation of practitioners, collectively create challenges to the OSH
profession. These challenges require the wisdom
of faculty, students, employers and professional
associations to address. This article offers a specific
perspective as to how best to advance the OSH
profession by achieving occupational closure vis-àvis a new set of education standards.
The OSH profession is wonderfully dynamic
and complex. It consists of a mix of line and staff
positions, incorporates practitioners from varied
backgrounds, has dozens of professional credentials (e.g., CSP, CIH, OHST, ARM, CPE), is compliant to reams of state, federal and global mandates,
standards and guidelines, exists in hundreds of industries, and includes dozens, if not hundreds, of
disparate work sites from nanotechnology, manufacturing and healthcare to construction sites and
nuclear power plants.
Characterizing the professional boundaries of
OSH is difficult and arguably cannot be done us-
ing job descriptions or titles, since these are typically idiosyncratic to an organization (particularly
in OSH as opposed to medicine, nursing or law).
Rather, it is best done by applying a research-based
and consensus-reaching method that results in a
set of educational standards that is widely adopted across OSH programs in higher education.
Implementing a system of continuous quality improvement based on the education standards of a
profession is best accomplished through accreditation, of both the institution and the program. The
authors note that program-level accreditation is
different from institutional accreditation, yet, both
are essential to a mature profession by ensuring
that undergraduates are capable of performing
OSH competencies.
As academics may already know, accreditation is
often cited as a quality-control measure in higher
education. However, the general term accreditation
is broad and includes many types and application
levels. Consequently, Ramsay (2013) observes that
accreditation suggests different things to different
people including thoughts of elitism, undue barriers to entry and exclusion to some, and excess
expense and effort to others. To others it may provide a measure of sanctification, akin to the USDA
stamp of approval.
Like any social system, accreditation cannot
guarantee quality; rather, specialized (programlevel) accreditation is a focused process by which
programs must present evidence of the degree to
which their students meet minimum professional
standards (i.e., knowledge, skills and abilities) as
well as evidence of the processes used to sustain
continuous quality improvement.
The traditional objective of accreditation is to assure students, faculty, programs, constituents (e.g.,
parents, employers) and institutions that graduates
have accomplished the learning outcomes (defined
here as the collective set of skills, knowledge and
behaviors) required in their chosen profession.
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ProfessionalSafety 41
Anecdotal debates continue at professional conferences and on blogs as to whether OSH is a profession in the same manner as is medicine, law,
nursing, teaching, engineering or theology. Others
have anecdotally observed that because less than
7% of all OSH programs are accredited, most safety graduates come from unaccredited programs.
Further confusing the quality argument is that
some OSH programs reside in institutions that are
nationally accredited and not regionally accredited.
Ultimately, to the layperson, parent or employer,
accreditation is not only confusing, but understanding it requires navigating a largely complex web
of unfamiliar terms, measures and organizations.
Sometimes, what constitutes quality and legitimacy
is unclear and often lies in the eye of the beholder.
Program vs. Institutional Accreditation
Accreditation occurs at various levels in higher
education. Hence, it is important to distinguish the
sort of accreditation being discussed. For example,
regarding higher education institutions, institutional accreditation is a process concerned only
with the educational institution, its structures, processes and finances.
“The goal of accreditation is to ensure that education provided by institutions of higher education meets acceptable levels of quality. Accrediting
agencies develop evaluation criteria and conduct
peer evaluations to assess whether those criteria
are met” (U.S. Department of Education, 2016).
In contrast, program-level accreditation is focused
strictly on the quality of the faculty, curriculum and
the processes of a degree-granting academic program. While an academic program may reside in an
institution of higher education that has itself been
accredited, such institutional accreditation status
has no bearing on the quality of any of the institution’s academic programs. In this way, accreditation
at both the institutional and program levels is required to ensure that professionalism and continuous quality improvement are present.
Several examples exist of organizations that
conduct program-level accreditation, such as Association of Technology, Management and Applied Engineering (formerly National Association
of Industrial Technology), and Accreditation Board
OSH as a Sovereign Profession
The intent of both OSH core competency workshops was to
produce a model curriculum for the OSH discipline that was based
on a thorough literature review, best practices and policies, and
the consensus wisdom of acknowledged SMEs in the discipline. In
turn, the model curriculum was organized around a set of knowledge domains and competencies within each domain. From the
model curriculum, a new set of accreditation standards would be
derived by the ASSE Education Standards Committee. As in other
mature disciplines, this is a critical component to having OSH
accreditation standards enjoy widespread credibility and adoption in higher education. Ultimately, widespread adoption of such
education standards paves the way for occupational closure, and
the ultimate demarcation of OSH as a sovereign profession.
42 ProfessionalSafety
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for Engineering and Technology (ABET). These organizations enhance the reliability and credibility
of the program accreditation process by becoming
recognized by either the U.S. Department of Education or Council for Higher Education Accreditation (CHEA, 2002). The accreditation that such
organizations bestow is referred to as recognized
program-level accreditation, specialized programlevel accreditation or simply accreditation.
How Best to Frame the Identity of a Profession?
For a maturing discipline to frame its operating boundaries, it is most logical to emulate how
more established professions have done so. Professions such as nursing, dietetics, engineering,
medicine and law use student learning outcomes,
which are knowledge, skills or abilities/behaviors
(KSAs) demonstrated by the student upon successful completion of a teaching module/course, to
create professional identity. In turn, the KSAs that
students are expected to be able to demonstrate at
graduation become the ultimate basis for occupational closure.
As charged by the ASSE board of directors, defining minimum education standards for the OSH
profession is a primary goal of the ASSE Education
Standards Committee (ESC). ABET is the main
accrediting body the ESC has used over the past
20 years. In turn, ASSE currently supports several
of its members to serve on the ABET board of directors and the Applied Sciences Commission (to
which OSH programs belong within ABET).
In addition, ASSE supports program accreditation
by selecting and training program evaluators, and
the Society helps more than a dozen programs seek
and achieve ABET accreditation. Interestingly, the
ESC’s standard operating guidelines call for a revision of the education standards used in accreditation
on a regular basis. As a revision deadline loomed,
ESC and ASSE leadership sponsored two national
workshops that brought together a large representational set of subject matter experts (SMEs) to help
build the first OSH model curriculum, and, subsequently, to define and update existing education accreditation standards.
The concept of using SMEs and workshops to
revise OSH education standards was consistent
with prevailing ASSE strategy. As expressly stated by past and standing ASSE presidents and in
ASSE’s strategic plan, demarcating the road for
OSH professionalization has a long history. Michael Belcher, 2015-16 ASSE president, carried
this theme in his April 2016 President’s Message.
He noted the ASSE executive board reorganization and four strategic goals: 1) enhance member
communities recognizing their important role; 2)
assure quality and pertinent opportunities for professional development; 3) serve the profession by
facilitating OSH consensus standards; and 4) build
the value of the profession, including “do everything possible to advance professionalism and
ensure that only competent professionals perform
OSH duties” (ASSE, 2016). Ferguson and Ramsay
(2010) note that the success of the OSH profes-
Figure 1
Conceptual Flow Guiding the National SME Workshops
Goal: A consistent
applied, minimum set
of core competencies
•Guidance documents
•International policies,
practices and research
•Research and body of
knowledge
•State, government,
international
•Affiliate
organizations: ASSE,
BCSP, ABIH, NSC
•Employer needs
Accountable,
outcomes-based
higher education
•OSH undergrads
meet/exceed
minimal core OSH
program learning
outcomes derived
from core
competencies
Certification/
licensure/
credentialing
•Education standards
•Experience
•Professional
credentials
•Occupational closure
via certification/
licensure
sion is dependent on differentiating member capabilities by assuring minimum OSH educational
standards, defining competent experience, passing
appropriate credentialing exams, meeting certification continuance requirements and, ultimately,
achieving occupational closure.
Within ASSE, professionalizing OSH in one
form or another has been underway for more than
50 years. During this time, professionalization efforts have been strongly supported by scholarship
as well as senior leadership within ASSE and in
higher education. Utilizing methods from Hartz
(2014), the authors facilitated both workshops that
included members from the ASSE ESC and several
other SMEs to codify and establish a set of knowledge domains that describe the OSH discipline
and a minimum set of learning outcomes (or competencies) for each knowledge domain.
SMEs were defined according to Hartz (2014),
who defined experts or SMEs as those professionals who have in the past 5 years, singularly or in
combination:
1) served on an advisory committee of an ABETASAC accredited program;
2) published peer-reviewed OSH literature;
3) served on a national OSH committee or research task force;
4) served as a terminal-degreed associate or full
professor faculty member, holding a current and
germane board certification;
5) worked full time as an OSH practitioner at a
facility or job site with demonstrated OSH performance excellence, verified by a third party;
6) hired and managed B.S. OSH program graduates at a facility or job site with demonstrated OSH
performance excellence, verified by a third party
(Hartz, 2014).
Functionally, the first workshop focused on producing a consensus set of knowledge domains that
would be used to characterize and define the OSH
discipline. The second workshop focused on developing a consensus set of learning outcomes (i.e.,
Mature and sovereign
profession
(i.e., educational system
that produces capable
OSH professionals with a
common set of
competencies)
Demonstrated results reflecting
value added to respective
organizations and society
competencies) within each domain. Ultimately,
a set of knowledge domains and competencies
within each domain would comprise a model curriculum.
Semantics: Competencies, Capabilities
& Learning Outcomes
When assessing an employee’s performance,
employers typically use themes of knowledge,
skills and behaviors coupled with an assessment
of accomplishments measured by performance of
budget and/or objectives or goals based on objective data and subjective feedback from subordinates, peers and internal or external clients. In
professional preparation programs, higher education focuses on completion of learning outcomes
to define what a student will be able to do upon
completion of a course or degree.
For purposes of this work, competencies correspond to learning outcomes. Learning outcomes
and established areas of research and practice
that together define the OSH profession’s body of
knowledge can be organized into themes or categories of knowledge domains. Seven knowledge
domains were established, with corresponding
competencies or learning outcomes. Competencies
are based on/reflect the knowledge, abilities and
skills learned and applied by evidence of communication, reasoning and ethical conduct, ultimately
benefitting workers and their corresponding organizations (Epstein & Hundert, 2002), that all OSH
professionals should know and be able to do after
completing an undergraduate education.
In the case of OSH, the authors believe that performance expectations of competence (or successful
completion of learning outcomes) must be established to demonstrate OSH undergraduate capability. According to International Network for Safety
and Health Practitioner Organizations (INSHPO,
2015), competence is the ability to execute/complete
a task skillfully, correctly and professionally. In contrast, capability is the ability to apply theoretical
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ProfessionalSafety 43
knowledge that underpins practice in occupations
and the industry-specific knowledge and skills that
transcend a specific workplace and the tacit knowledge of the workplace.
For OSH, the two categories of competencies,
technical and adaptive, work together to create capability. Technical competencies are those
derived from the literature, from best academic
practices and appreciating employer needs, while
adaptive competencies are more focused on the
softer skills of day-to-day professional life and
leadership such as communication, relationship
building, trust, partnering, collaboration and
learning (Heifetz, 1994).
44 ProfessionalSafety
Methodology
To develop a minimum core of OSH competencies, the authors proposed that ASSE sponsor two
national work…
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