Samenhang tussen jaren werkervaring van pedagogisch medewerkers en competentiebeleving op het gebied van kindermishandeling

Abstract

Introduction. Child maltreatment has negative effects on the development of children. Children with ages between two to four years old are at high risk of becoming a victim of maltreatment. Therefore, it’s important that professionals are able to adequately signal possible cases of child maltreatment. The current study examines whether there is a coherence between the years of work experience of preschool teachers and their perceived competence in signaling child maltreatment. It’s expected that preschool teachers with over five years of working experience with children from two to four years old feel more confident in signaling child maltreatment. Furthermore, it’s expected that general trainings on child maltreatment acts as a mediator in this context. Method. Questionnaires regarding background information and perceived competence will be filled out by 66 preschool teachers and will be subsequently analyzed by using four regression analyses: one for each type of child maltreatment. Results. Results indicate that there is no correlation between the amount of working experience of preschool teachers and their competence on signaling the different types of child maltreatment. The amount of training from preschool teachers has no mediating effect on their competence experience. Discussion. Possible explanations for the results are given, such as the finding that there is a lack of specific literature regarding Dutch preschool teachers. Also, recommendations for further research are presented. The current research is a first step in a more specialized body of research.