Examining Teachers' Awareness of Child Abuse and Neglect

The aim of this research was to reveal the level of awareness of teachers regarding child abuse and neglect and understand the reasons of their awareness levels.To achieve this purpose, this research was designed in mixed methodology.The sample of the quantitative part of the study was 206 teachers working in schools affiliated with the Ministry of National Education of Turkey determined by the snowball sampling method, and 9 teachers for the qualitative part of the study.The Scale of Diagnosing the Signs and Risks of Child Abuse and Neglect developed by Uysal (1998), and semi-structured interview form were used as data collection tools.According to the findings, teachers' awareness levels of child abuse and neglect were medium or low.The reasons of this level stem from teachers themselves or schools' features.And according to some teachers, their awareness was not low, there are some reasons preventing them to report the cases.