A workshop initiated by the Traffic Education Group (TUG) at VTI on the theme “Traffic Education - What research is currently conducted in the field today and how do we want the field to develop" was held at VTI in November 2010. TUG was represented by six researchers and six visiting participants from The National Society for Road Safety (NTF), The Swedish National Association of Driving Schools (STR), Trivector Information and The Swedish Transport Agency participated. Initially a lecture was held on the topic of educational trends of today. The presentation focused on the relationships between learning goals, teaching methods and examination. The presentation was followed by a discussion presented in this report. A lot of research has been conducted in the field but has it been put into practice? Various methods have been tested but not yet used on a larger scale. A proposal about traffic education in the mandatory school has been developed but as the subject will not be compulsory it will probably have very low practical impact. Another important question is who is responsible for financing research in this field. It seems like this task has fallen through the cracks. The largest part of the discussion was devoted to driving license education and the question was raised whether or not there would be a revision of the whole system initiated by the politicians. The evaluation results of the new syllabus for driving license B indicate that little has changed within the driving license education and the question is whether the driving teachers need more support to transform the curriculum into practical education. The driving schools have to contend with a culture where as few lessons as possible is considered the best (cost and time), which makes it difficult to improve teaching quality. What research is conducted today and what should be focused on in the future? Formal teaching at driving schools (both theory and practice) has not been scientifically proved to be more efficient than informal private driver training with laymen instructors. Driver instructor's role as interpreter of the course objectives and to translate these into teaching was highlighted as a research area to focus on. The new driver instructor education (with permit and supervising by the new authority Yh-myndigheten, the Swedish National Agency for Higher Vocational Education) was discussed and whether the content and quality of education were deprioritized in relation to the teacher's employability. Furthermore, there was request for more research on young (mainly male) learner drivers’ brain development (higher order cognitive skills) and the impact of this on their development into safe car drivers (risk perception and self-assessment). What are the motives behind of either a wish to get a license or to refrain from driving was an issue considered valuable to explore further. The importance of the dissemination of research results to teachers and students was also emphasized. Collaboration between branch organizations (and other stake holders) and researchers was consider another important subject. In Sweden, researchers in traffic education were considered to be few and the need to collaborate and form a network in order to develop traffic education research emerged during the meeting. A number of research questions to explore further were proposed and VTI's coordinating role was highlighted. (Author/publisher) This report may be accessed by Internet users at http://www.vti.se/EPiBrowser/Publikationer%20-%20English/N11-2011Eng.pdf
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