The purpose of this study is to investigate teacher's experience in discovering neglected children in the classroom and the relationship between the causes of such neglect and family type as well as the external, emotional and behavioral characteristi...
The purpose of this study is to investigate teacher's experience in discovering neglected children in the classroom and the relationship between the causes of such neglect and family type as well as the external, emotional and behavioral characteristics of the neglected child.
The subjects were 124 teachers who were working at child care centers in ChungCheongNam-Do, and who were then given a questionnaire to measure teacher's perception on child abuse, The Statistical Analysis (SAS) program was used to analyze the collected data from the research in terms of means, standard deviation and percentage.
The results of this study were as follows;
First, 79% of the subjects have experience in identifying neglected children in their classes, In the family type of the child, 47.5% were fostered by biological parents. As cause of neglect, the teachers indicated parental indifference or irresponsibility (28.6%), marital employment (22.5%), improper rearing attitude(17.4%) and family troubles(12.3%). In external, emotional and behavioral characteristics, the external ones were less remarkable than the others. In detail, the neglected children tended to be greedy for food (3,18), and were inattentive (3.76)or tried to read other's mind (3.63).
Second, after identifying the neglected child in the class, 58.5% of the subjects admitted to having a warmer attitude towards the child. They would then attempt to resolve the problem through counseling with parents (66.9%) or parent education(22.6%). 94.6% found that not only their intervention but also professional help for parents were needed in order to protect the rights of the child. While 77.3% knew the child abuse report center, only 2.7% used it.
Moreover, 66% who would report the child neglect to the center, suggested, as reasons for reporting, the protection of the child's rights (42.9%), and th e need for proper solution (35.7%). On the other hand, as reasons for not reporting, they suggested parents' repulsion or negative response to their report (38.9%), and preference for counseling or parent education (30.6%) in order to solve problems.