Wellington City Libraries Palm Tree Blossoming of Our Children - Kia Puawai Ngā Tamariki - 10th Australasian Conference on Child Abuse and Neglect

Is it real? Child abuse behind school gates.


 

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Author and Speaker

Anna Piekarska

Organisation

Auckland University of Technology, Auckland
   

Objectives

This paper presents research on student maltreatment/abuse in school by teachers.  Several studies were conducted in New Zealand, Germany and Poland.  The main goals were to investigate:

  1. The nature and extent of maltreatment/abuse experienced by school students from their teachers/educators;
  2. Coping with abuse and symptoms of trauma, including post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).


Method

A field-correlative designs and quantitative/qualitative methodologies were applied to conduct three studies.  In the New Zealand survey 412 university students described their past school experiences with abusive teacher behaviours.  In the German (N =241) and Polish (N=170) studies the adopted versions of standardised instrument The Student Alienation and Trauma Survey (SATS) were utilised to test university students (age 18-25) and identify their past traumatic school events which caused trauma.

Results

In the New Zealand study 42% of participants reported an experience of abuse from teachers, 40% reported its high frequency, 5% of that, being abuse experienced on a daily basis.  Almost 10% of the respondents reported abuse in all levels of their schooling.  Of all of those experiencing abuse over 78% reported emotional and verbal abuse, 50% physical abuse, 7% sexual abuse and 3% reported experiencing neglect.  Overall, 29% of participants responded to the abuse by telling someone or formally reporting it; 23% indicated that they "tolerated" abuse while 12% reported taking action to avoid the abusive teacher.

In the German and Polish studies the preliminary results have been completed, although some data are still being analysed using advanced statistical methods and international comparisons.  In the German sample 30% of participants indicated school educators as perpetrators of their traumatic experiences and 8.7% were in the range of clinically significant symptoms of PTSD as a result of school trauma. Similar trends were found in the Polish sample although specific data will be presented using additional comparisons with 10 other countries (including New Zealand) participating in the Cross National Study:

  1. Maltreatment/abuse by teachers: the most prevalent and stressful school situations caused by educators;
  2. Abuse by teachers resulting in students' victimisation (at risk symptoms) and/or PTSD (clinically significant symptoms);
  3. Profiles of victims and perpetrators of maltreatment/abuse in the schools.

Conclusions

Health, education and policy issues relating to students' victimisation by educators will be discussed.  The focus will be on urgent implementation of protection measures. Wider prevention issues of child abuse in the schools will also be discussed.

Paper

research and practice connection

Anna Piekarska (PhD) is senior lecturer at AUT, School of Education, and previously has held several academic appointments overseas (Warsaw University and Queensland University) and in New Zealand (Victoria University of Wellington).  Anna is an internationally recognized expert in the field of child abuse and neglect and her publications consist of one authored book (on parental violence against children) , six book contributions, twelve sole articles in peer reviewed journals, including leading international journals like Child Abuse and Neglect or Interpersonal Violence, and over 30 presentations (including plenary sessions) at prestigious congresses.

Anna is a reviewer in the International Journal of Child Abuse and Neglect, member of the editorial board of Child Abuse Journal in Poland and a member of international research societies and networks e.g. International Society for Prevention of Child Abuse and Neglect (ISPCAN), New York Academy of Sciences (NYAS) International Society for Research on Aggression (ISRA) and International Network for Research on Media and Children, Nordicom.

Currently Anna is involved in a contribution (research in Poland and Germany) to the Cross National Study on Students' Victimisation and Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), co-ordinated by Temple University, the National Centre for Research on Physical Punishment and Alternatives, USA.