Violence prevention in early childhood: Effectiveness of a violence prevention curriculum for Head Start teachers

Abstract

Youth in the U.S. are victims of, perpetrators of, and exposed to violence. A tool of violence prevention is early childhood education. Teachers of Head Start in rural, heavily Hispanic, South Texas are recruited to receive a newly developed violence prevention training program. This was done utilizing a quasi­-experimental design with a control group and two experimental groups. Of the 107 teachers involved in the program, 84 completed both the pre-test and post-test instruments. The effectiveness of the training in influencing knowledge and attitudes is tested here. Analysis of the data indicates that knowledge and attitudes are influenced both by the training and by having had prior exposure to violence. The results of this study suggest that violence prevention education enhances both knowledge and feelings of competency regarding ability to deal with violence. This study indicates that there is a need for further development and implementation of violence prevention curricula for both teachers and children involved in early childhood training programs such as Head Start.