LEARN! Manual Example #3
This example shows the Norwegian Council for Road Safety’s analysis before developing its Children’s Traffic Club, which is for kindergartens and the early years in school (3 to 9 year old children). In this example we focus on adults as a target group.
Related Step
The Activity Level: The Problem Analysis and Needs Assessment for the Specific Activity
Age Group
3 to 9 year olds
The Children’s Traffic Club (“Barnas trafikklubb”) is considered in the context of the needs of society and families for traffic safety. Children have a right to grow up safely, and traffic safety should be an important and natural part of their everyday life. Traffic safety for children is the adult’s responsibility and involves physical arrangements, the use of safety equipment, education and training, guidance and support. Children must gradually be given more and more responsibility for themselves and their safety. If children establish good habits when they are small, it is likely that they will become responsible road-users.
Children are road-users every day, as passengers, as pedestrians and, as they grow older, as cyclists. The most important learning is practical through their own experiences. Adults are important role models in this regard. The choice of everyday transport to the day-care centre, school, work and leisure-time activities affects the child’s traffic education.
A major effort to reduce traffic collisions involving children has produced good results, and the picture is fortunately completely different than it was in the 1960s and 70s. The goal is to maintain this positive trend, which the Norwegian Council for Road Safety considers to be best achieved by long-term preventive measures. New generations therefore require a continuous effort in this area. The traffic environment is constantly changing, and education and training are the best basis for creating responsible road-users, a premise in the vision of zero road deaths. Many families with children are concerned about traffic safety, but not all of them. The Norwegian Council for Road Safety therefore wants to help ensure that traffic is included in a natural way in the implementation of activities scheduled throughout the year in day-care centres and schools.
They believe that most people have good intentions about safeguarding the best interests of children, but in busy everyday life, traffic safety can be forgotten in favour of other areas in which people have to engage. Many adults may find it unpleasant to be confronted with attitudes and careless behaviour with regard to obeying traffic rules. Hence, in this project the Norwegian Council for Road Safety focuses on knowledge and norms, and plays an active role in presenting knowledge about the use of safety equipment, especially correct protection of children in cars and the use of reflectors.
Since the club started in 1966, living conditions of families with small children have changed, and nowadays most children attend a day-care centre. Therefore, the Norwegian Council for Road Safety wants to give both kindergartens and schools the possibility to work with activities, films, materials and ideas from the club.
The main target group is teachers and day-care centre staff, as they are the ones who draw up the annual plan. Parents play the most important role in the children’s development and upbringing, and this is also true with regard to traffic safety. They can be given information directly on the internet and social media, and the educational supervisor receives material concerning parental cooperation, written reports, tips and advice, and knowledge about safeguarding children in cars, etc.
Children are obviously also a target group. The Children’s Traffic Club was created in order to ensure that children stay safe in traffic, in this case through an adult taking responsibility. The youngest children should not be allowed to move about alone in mixed traffic, but we will talk about what is safe and what is dangerous in traffic. When the Norwegian Council for Road Safety developed the content, they used the 5E model to be sure that the children themselves are engaged and get the opportunity to explore, explain, elaborate and evaluate in their own learning process.
More Information
Trygg Trafikk, Barnas Trafikklub.
Key Principles #5 & #6 Example: Children’s Traffic Club in Norway.