The event was facilitated by Ulrike Bollmann, Founder and President of ENETOSH and Peter Paulus, Director of the Centre for Applied Health Sciences at Leuphana University Lüneburg in Germany.
A total of seven presentations were given accompanied by a lively communication in the chat.
20 minus 1 year: The European Network Education and Training in Occupational Safety and Health (ENETOSH)
Ulrike Bollmann, Founder and President of ENETOSH and Claus Dethleff, Web-editor of ENETOSH, 3c Creative Communication Concepts GmbH, Germany, started with a brief overview of the past and near future of ENETOSH.
It all began in 2005 as a two-year EU-funded project and with a kick-off event at EU-OSHA in Bilbao. Some milestones, e.g., the Leonardo da Vinci Award in 2009, the launch of the competence standard for teachers and trainers in OSH in 2010 , a joint event with ILO and ISSA in Turin in 2012, the ENETOSH events at the world congresses in Frankfurt (2014) and Singapore (2017) can be taken from this graph:
Since 2020, cooperation with EU-OSHA has intensified, particularly in the context of the Healthy Workplaces Campaigns. Joint events and publications are being undertaken, most recently the report on AI and education, which also formed the basis for this event: https://osha.europa.eu/en/publications/artificial-intelligence-and-education-teacher-centred-approach-safety-and-health .
ENETOSH is an open network, that means, anyone who is interested in safety, health and education can participate. It’s strength lays in weak ties (Granovetter 1973).
ENETOSH is supervised by a steering committee, the practical work is organised in task forces. The network's work is based on the ENETOSH strategic framework and action plan for 2021–2025.
In January 2025 Steffi Niederhuber, DGUV, has taken over the coordination of the network.
The web statistics for 2024 show almost 7,500 visitors and more than 21,000 clicks for the ENETOSH website: www.enetosh.net. In November 2024 alone, the website had almost 100 visitors and 3,000 clicks.
The future of a network depends very much on good internal networking, but also and above all on good external networking. ENETOSH has traditionally enjoyed good relations with other networks and not least with international organisations and initiatives. One current example is the memorandum of understanding with the Global Initiative for Safety, Health & Wellbeing (GISHW), which is organising the Days on Safety, Health, and Well-being for the first time ever in the history of the World Expo 2025 in Osaka, Japan.
(A click on the picture will open the presentation in PDF format in a new browser tab)
Steffi Niederhuber, the new coordinator of ENETOSH at the Institute for Work and Health of the German Social Accident Insurance (DGUV), conducted a brief online SWOT analysis via the chat box.
The participants expressed the following views on the strengths, weaknesses, challenges and opportunities of ENETOSH:
Strength:
- The knowledge and experience of the members and their motivation for improvement
- The ENETOSH Good practices database
- ENETOSHs’ vision and mission addresses the needs in OSH and education making us relevant to current and revolutionary changes
- Many ideas and creative ways to involve health and safety topics into education
- ENETOSH possesses significant power of collective experts all around the world to carry out advanced initiatives
- The focus on OSH education and training going to schools and reaching young people
- Excellent contribution and insight
- Focusing on OSH within education. Thanks for a powerful meeting. As I am back to ENETOSH, I am looking for future education in OSH with AI technology. And looking for meeting together soon. Good luck!
Weakness:
- Maybe sometimes hard to grasp due to the internationality
- Not addressing the role of teachers as OHS or emergency responders in emergencies
- Financing for initiatives
- It’s not easy to get to the policy makers especially when they are not OSH priority in Education. A bit of work is needed for ENETOSH to be visible internationally
Challenge / Threat:
- Different educational policies across the globe
- Different evolution of safety and health in the different countries that are part of the ENETOSH
Opportunity:
- It would be good to look for strategic partnerships with UN Organisations for the next strategy plan from 2026. Lots of opportunities!
- Large international network committed to improving OSH in schools. It would be great to include more educators within schools to the network to help practical delivery of good practice further
When the matrix becomes your classroom: support for digital school development with eEducation Austria
Andreas Riepl, head of eEducation Austria, gave a brilliant speech about artificial intelligence as an opportunity for Austrian schools.
eEducation Austria follows the concept of competency-based education and is based on the European frameworks for digital education: DigComp, DigCompEdu, DigCompOrg.
More than 6,000 schools and 78% of all teachers and students in Austria are represented in the eEducation network. Their digital progress is documented by collecting ‘badges’. Collecting badges leads to a different school status: expert or expert+ school. Five activities have to be clicked on. The badges help to raise awareness and explore how, for example, AI-based tools work for teachers and students. Expert+ schools can access badges for further digital education. A self-assessment tool for school development is available.
Building on this basic digital education, the Federal Ministry of Education, Science and Research launched an AI initiative in 2023: the ‘AI School Package’. 114 AI pilot schools are participating in this initiative.
The AI initiative comprises five dimensions for teaching: learning with AI, learning about AI, learning from AI, but also learning despite AI and learning without AI. The dimensions are based on the ethical guidelines for the use of artificial intelligence and data in teaching and learning for educators of the European Commission: (https://education.ec.europa.eu/news/ethical-guidelines-on-the-use-of-artificial-intelligence-and-data-in-teaching-and-learning-for-educators)
Digital school development in Austria follows a holistic approach based on three pillars: organisation, personnel/HR, instruction, which is guided by an elaborate quality matrix and supported by a digital concept assistant. The competence assessment tool KOMET and the Dakora+ app for everyday diagnosis are used for self-assessment.
The initiative is 100% funded by the ministry and has a budget of €1.5 million per year.
(A click on the picture will open the presentation in PDF format in a new browser tab)
How human friendly is ChatGPT for knowledge workers? Analyzing opportunities and risks of generative AI with the FriendlyTechCheck (FTC)
Anja Gerlmaier and Paul-Fiete Kramer, researchers at the Institute for Work, Skills and Training at the University of Duisburg-Essen, provided a deep insight into the research of the competence centre humAIne – Transfer Centre of the Ruhr Metropolis for human-centred work with AI. The project is funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research. The project started in April 2021 and will run until May 2026.
The research project of Anja Gerlmaier and Paul-Fiete Kramer is based on a participatory development tool for a human-friendly implementation of generative artificial intelligence (GenAI). Their focus is not on the technology, but on the work of, for example, scientists or teachers: What does GenAI, in this case ChatGPT, do with knowledge workers and teachers?
They identified six dimensions of human-centredness in order to proactively identify the opportunities and risks associated with the integration of GenAI technologies into knowledge/research work, and to translate them into requirements for human-centred design: well-being, fairness, usability, autonomy, competence development, social interaction.
The results of using ChatGPT are ambivalent: on the one hand, using ChatGPT makes work easier (by overcoming boring tasks and mental blocks and providing a quick overview), but on the other hand, a loss of social support (collective problem solving, less trust in colleagues) can be observed.
Suboptimal explainability and insufficient knowledge about prompts were identified as crucial risk factors for new AI-specific mental health issues: fear of failure or fake, addictive behaviour and increased workload due to additional control efforts. In particular, a tension between autonomy and insecurity was identified.
Further information can be found in ENETOSH Factsheet No. 7 by Anja Gerlmaier and Paul-Fiete Kramer:
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Improving the quality of education through the Good Healthy School Initiative (GHSI)
Peter Paulus, Director of the Centre for Applied Health Sciences (ZAG) at Leuphana University Lüneburg, presented the new Good Healthy School Initiative (GHSI) and its scientific background: More than 20% of children and adolescents suffer from mental health issues; almost 30% of children and adolescents report a low quality of life. These findings correlate with the results of school performance studies such as PISA, which show a continuous decline in performance in the period 2000–2019, after an initial increase (‘bad smiley’; see slide 4 of his presentation).
The GHSI was launched in response to this. The GHSI is a three-year international project (February 2023 to March 2026) designed to bring together national and international partners committed to creating healthy, vibrant school environments for better educational outcomes. The project is implemented by Leuphana GmbH, Education and Health Department, and funded by the German Social Accident Insurance (DGUV).
The GHSI has developed a unique school strategy that aims to improve the educational quality of a school by promoting health and well-being. This approach goes far beyond the application of individual health-promoting measures for specific target groups in a school context or the development of a health-promoting school environment: the GHSI focuses on improving the quality of education through health, on the concept of the Good Healthy School. The aim is to improve schools through health, in direct connection with educational goals.
The initiative seeks to build a network of decision-makers in the fields of education and health who are committed to improving the mental, emotional, physical and social well-being of students and teachers, and thus to improving the quality of education in the long term.
Peter Paulus calls on participants to join the GHSI community:
https://www.skool.com/goodhealthyschools/about
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Building healthy and resilient schools: a global perspective
The highlight of the event was the presentation by Goof Buijs, UNESCO Chair in Global Health and Education, Paris. He explained the strategy of the UNESCO Chair for improving health for all and reducing health inequalities. Accordingly, health for all must become an integral part of the education system. And every school needs a systemic plan.
The UNESCO Chair strategy emphasises a systematic improvement of the living conditions that influence health and the education of students so that they are able to take care of their own health independently and responsibly.
There are several factors that influence the implementation of health in schools at the various levels of policy, structures and systems, human resources and practices.
Finally, Goof Buijs presented the results of a global mapping study that began in 1986, the year the Ottawa Charter was proclaimed, and ended in 2021. About the Ottawa Charter: https://www.who.int/teams/health-promotion/enhanced-wellbeing/first-global-conference This study examined the knowledge base of research on health promotion in the school context, with a focus on English-speaking countries.
In the light of the study's findings, Goof Buijs shared three ideas with the participants:
1. To make the research field for health-promoting schools (HPS) more interdisciplinary and global.
2. To align the Good Healthy School with the global HPS strategy: building healthy and resilient schools.
3. To bring the fields of health and education closer together – to speak more the same language.
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The following questions were raised in the subsequent discussion:
- What does healthy teaching look like?
- What is healthy learning?
- Is cooperative open learning the future?
- What is our vision of education?
Additional information about a recent initiative of ENETOSH was given by Dingani Moyo, National University of Science and Technology, Zimbabwe, and Johanna Mai, DGUV, on the finalization of a study conducted by ENETOSH and supported by DGUV on Integrating UN Sustainable Development Goal No. 8 into education at African universities.
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Tanja Nordberg (Metropolitan University Oslo – OsloMet, Norway) and Selçuk Yaşar (Ministry for Labour and Social Security, Türkiye) invited all participants of join the upcoming ENETOSH event “Global Crisis, Youth and Education: Innovative Approaches to Risk, Resilience and Resonance” that will take place on 19 July during the Days on Safety, Health, and Well-being at EXPO 2025 in Osaka, Japan: https://gishw.com/
All participants who took part in this event in December 2024 will receive an ENETOSH discount of 30% on the participation fee.
(A click on the picture will open the presentation in PDF format in a new browser tab)
