Personal safety curriculum in junior primary classrooms: Are teachers teaching it?

Previous studies have revealed that the teaching of personal safety strategies to children is spasmodic and selective, avoiding vital information that would help children to identify and report sexual abuse. In this study a questionnaire was used to explore the views of 33 South Australian junior primary teachers regarding the teaching of personal safety to children.

Results showed that most of the participating teachers claimed to teach some personal safety skills, using a variety of materials and methods, but it would appear that they concentrated on ‘safe’ topics such as road safety and avoided topics relating to child sexual abuse and violence. It was also found that 50% had not undertaken any training within the last two years even though the overwhelming majority felt that further training was required in order to teach topics effectively. This suggested that motivation for teaching personal safety was low. These and other findings are discussed and recommendations for greater emphasis on training of teachers and further research into this area are made.