A study of preservice teachers' knowledge and attitudes about child maltreatment and mandatory reporting

Child maltreatment is a serious public health concern. Victims of maltreatment can face enduring difficulties related to biological, social, emotional, and cognitive functioning. The identification and reporting of child maltreatment is an essential first step in responding to the needs of children impacted by it. Despite the fact that educational professionals consistently file the most abuse and neglect reports with child protective services among all reporting entities, underreporting of child maltreatment is a significant problem. Educators have the opportunity and responsibility to intervene early by becoming informed observers of the children they care for, as well as reporters of circumstances that indicate maltreatment may be taking place. To become informed observers and reporters, educators must be able to recognize indicators of child maltreatment and be familiar with reporting processes. However, many educators do not feel their preservice and inservice training adequately prepared them to act as mandated reporters of child maltreatment (Kenny, 2004, 2001). Further, educators play a particularly important role in identifying and reporting maltreatment in children with disabilities because children with disabilities experience maltreatment at a much higher rate than children without disabilities. At present, there are no studies that have evaluated if disability status influences educators reporting decisions. In the current study, a modified version of the Educators and Child Abuse Questionnaire (ECAQ; Kenny, 2000) was used to evaluate preservice teachers' knowledge and attitudes about child maltreatment and to determine if a child's disability status impacts their reporting decisions. Results indicate that students' disability status did not significantly influence preservice teachers reporting decisions in the hypothetical vignettes; however, type of maltreatment experienced by the student did significantly influence preservice teacher's reporting decisions. Moreover, there were distinct differences in the knowledge and attitudes of the preservice teacher in the current study and the inservice teachers from previous studies. Information regarding perceived barriers to reporting, adequacy of preservice training, and participants' perceived knowledge of indicators of maltreatment are described in detail.