Risk education: A worldview analysis of what is present and could be

Abstract

Risk, risk analysis, risk management and risk-based decision-making are ubiquitous ideas in the modern world. Consequently, risk education is emerging as a new field of research. However, just as the defining of risk and what it entails is a contested topic, so too is the field of risk education research open to many possible approaches. In this paper notions of risk, particularly as they play out in research on risk education, are analyzed (within an ethical space) using a theoretical framework based on the Traditional Western and an Indigenous worldview. Through this analysis, along with the identification of the kinds of knowledge and ways of knowing currently being valued in the research, other kinds of knowledge and ways of knowing that may prove just as important emerge.