Student Teachers' Learning about Child Sexual Abuse Strategies for Primary School: An Exploratory Study of Surface and Deep Learning

This paper explores student teachers' understandings of child sexual abuse and strategies to deal with it that are appropriate for the primary school classroom. Evidence of surface and deep learning were obtained from a content analysis of student teachers' responses to an essay-type exam question, using Bloom's taxonomy of educational objectives. The results show that participants were most likely to be rated as having achieved at intermediate levels, and less likely to be at either the lowest or highest levels. The data suggest that greater provision should be made for addressing child sexual abuse during the training of such professionals to enhance their deeper thinking about child sexual abuse and strategies to deal with it. Since pre-service teacher education plays a significant role in enhancing the quality of future teachers, it is important that they are helped to achieve the highest levels associated with understanding universals, principles, generalizations and abstractions. The implications of these results for teaching in primary schools strongly suggest the importance of comprehensive, enhanced, longer, and on-going programmes on child sexual abuse across pre-service education. (Contains 3 figures.)