Codified knowledge and embodied learning: the problem of safety training Margaret Somerville a * and Anne Lloyd b a University of New England, Australia; b Charles Sturt University, Australia The research that informs this article was focused around the relationship between how workers are trained to work safely and how workers learn to work safely in the workplace. The findings of empirical studies into learning and practising safety in aged care, fire fighting, building construction, and mining industries are summarized. A common feature emerging from these studies is the failure of safety training through codified knowledge practices such as those incorporated in competency-based training. In such training the embodied learning of workers in the social and physical environments of the workplace is ignored. Stories of this embodied and spatial learning will be analysed in order to draw some conclusions about the practical problem of facilitating learning to work safely. We explore how theoretical categories of the body and space, which have been largely ignored in workplace learning research, can contribute to our under- standings of workplace learning more generally. Introduction Over the past 10 years, and parallel to the development of the new work order (Gee et al ., 1996), there has been increasing activity in the area of Occupational Health and Safety (OH&S). This activity has been driven by legislation, the increasing cost of insurance, the relationship between the cost of injury and the cost of production, and possibly increasing interest in safety and well-being at work by workers. This is particularly true for workplaces that have a high rate of injury such as aged care, coal mining and building construction, and dangerous work such as fire fighting. However, these concerns are not restricted only to workplaces with high levels of manual work and those normally considered dangerous workplaces. Academic workplaces, for example, have raised concerns via the National Tertiary Education Union. A recent study, Occupational stress in Australian universities (2003) claimed academic workers displayed the highest levels of stress of any occupation. However, in areas of manual work, the solution is seen to be one of safety training and regulation by textual practices, in which workers are regulated by rules and procedures and taught how to work safely using competency-based training packages. These ‘solutions’ involve a move from embodied learning to codified *Corresponding author. School of Administration and Training, University of New England, Armidale, NSW 235, Australia. Email: msomervi@pobox.une.edu.au ISSN 0158-037X (print)/ISSN 1470-126X (online)/06/030279-11 # 2006 Taylor & Francis DOI: 10.1080/01580370600947538 Studies in Continuing Education Vol. 28, No. 3, November 2006, pp. 279  289