Preservice Teachers’ Awareness Levels Regarding the Signs of Physical Abuse in Children

In this study, which aimed to investigate the pre-service teachers’ awareness levels regarding the signs of physical abuse in children, the sample included 173 subjects from the department of Early Childhood Education, 241 from Elementary Education, 221 from Social Studies Teaching and 129 subjects from the department of Turkish Teaching for a total of 764 pre-service teachers at the Faculty of Education. To collect data, a general information form including demographic characteristics of pre-service teachers and “Physical Abuse Signs Rating Scale” developed by Erol (2007) were used. According to the findings, the difference between Physical Abuse Signs Rating Scale’s states, behavioral characteristics and parent behaviors subtest scores according to pre-service teachers’ gender, field of study and years of study was not statistically significant whereas the difference between the state and behavioral characteristic scores according to pre-service teachers’ educational status regarding child neglect and abuse was found out to be significant