This paper presents an evaluation of an instrument to measure teachers' attitudes toward reporting child sexual abuse and discusses the instrument's merit for research into reporting practice. Based on responses from 444 Australian teachers, the Teachers' Reporting Attitude Scale for Child Sexual Abuse was evaluated using exploratory factor…

This study examined elementary school teachers' knowledge of their legislative and policy-based reporting duties with respect to child sexual abuse. Data were collected from 470 elementary school teachers from urban and rural government and nongovernment schools in 3 Australian states, which at the time of the study had 3 different legislative…

A recent report delivered by the Australian Centerer for Child Protection has highlighted the need for empirical evidence of effective pedagogies for supporting teaching and learning of child protection content in Australian teacher education programs (Arnold & Mai-Taddeo, 2007). This paper advances this call by presenting case study accounts…

This paper details a systematic literature review identifying problems in extant research relating to teachers' attitudes toward reporting child sexual abuse and offers a model for new attitude scale development and testing. Scale development comprised a five-phase process grounded in contemporary attitude theories, including (a) developing the…

Objective: To identify the influence of multiple case, teacher and school characteristics on Australian primary school teachers' propensity to detect and report child physical abuse and neglect using vignettes as short hypothetical cases. Methods: A sample of 254 teachers completed a self-report questionnaire. They responded to a series of 32…

Child abuse and neglect are serious social problems that make extraordinary demands on teachers' knowledge and professionalism. Yet the field of education has been slow to develop a discipline-specific knowledge base about child abuse and neglect for teachers and teacher education programmes and there is a paucity empirical research into teachers'…

This article establishes the important role of early childhood teachers in child abuse and neglect and argues for empirical research into their practice of detecting, and reporting, known or suspected child abuse and neglect in a State with new and unique reporting obligations for teachers. It emphasizes the practical value of such research for…