VIOLENCE PREVENTION IN EARL YCHILDHOOD: EFFECTIVENESS OF A VIOLENCE PREVENTION CURRICULUM FOR HEADSTARTTEACHERS

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 innuencing knowledge and attitudes is tested here. Analysis of the data indicates that knowledge and attitudes are innuenced 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. INTRODUCTION Young people in the United States are vic­ tims of violence. According to a report from the Centers for Disease Control (1996) there are an average of 22 youth homicide victims per day in the United States. In fact, according to the World Health Organization (1995), the homicide rate for males in the United States, 15-24 years old, is 10 times that of Canada, 15 times that of Australia, and 28 times that of France and Germany. Young people in the United States are per­ petrators of violence. According to Snyder, Sickmund, and Poe-Yamagata (1996) nearly 20 percent of all violent crimes in 1994 in­ volved a person under the age of 18. Fox (1996) found that homicide arrest rates for youth 14-17 years of age increased between 1989 and 1994 while decreasing for adults over 25. Young people in the United States are exposed to violence and are affected by that exposure. According to Garbarino (1995) In our interviews with families living in public housing projects in Chicago, we learned that virtually all of the children had first-hand ex­ periences with shootings by the time they were five years old. Powell, Dahlberg, Friday, Mercy, Thornton, and Crawford (1996) contend that· . violence by and to youths is an important public health problem. " Both witnessing violence and being a victim of violence are precursors to violent behavior (Pynoos 1993; Terr 1991 ). Children exposed to chronic and severe physical punishment by parents are at increased risk of developing aggressive and violent behavior both in child­ hood and adulthood. Moreover, this behavior is likely to be manifested both in and outside the family (American Psychological Associa­ tion 1993). In their review of the literature, Lewis, Mallouh and Webb (1989) found that approximately 20 percent of abused children go on to become delinquent compared with 5 percent of their non-abused counterparts. Chil­ dren who witness violence rather than experi­ encing it directly are also at risk of becoming perpetrators of violence. In their study, Du Rant, Cadenhead, Pendergrast, Slavens and Linder (1994) found that previous exposure to vio­ lence and victimization was the strongest pre­ dictor of use of violence by African-American adolescents living in a southern U.S. city. Sev­ eral studies have shown that marital conflict is a greater risk factor than family instability for the development of conduct problems and delinquency in children (Grych, Fincham, 1990; Hetherington, Cox, Cox 1982; Loeber, Stout­ hamer-Loeber 1986). Dysfunctional behavior, violence, can be approached in reactive ways treatment, pun­ ishment, rehabilitation, or in a pro1;1ctive fash­ ion through prevention. Gullotta (1994) pro­ vides a useful perspective which can be ap­ plied to violence prevention: Primary prevention can be defined as planned l'agi:/0:l l"oh1111i::l8 \o. I . \/m·:l/J(I(/ efforts to reduce (prevent) the incidence of new cases of dysfunctional behavior in a population not yet demonstrating signs of dysfunctional behavior and to encourage (promote) behaviors that are known to con­ tribute to functional behaviors. This indicates that a good maxim for preven­ tion is 'the earlier the better'. A study by Dawkins, Fullilove, and Dawkins (1995) . provided evidence based on mothers' ob­ servations of their children's behavior to sup­ port the assumption that potential child be­ havior disorders may be identified as early as age three or four. Gullotta ( 1994) points out The tools that preventionists use are educa­ tion, competency promotion, community or­ ganization/systems intervention, and natural caregiving to encourage the growth of func­ tional behaviors . in society. The American Psychological Association (1993) suggests that early childhood is the time to begin. Laying the groundwork for preventing vio­ lence begins early in a child's development. In their early years, children learn fundamental ways of dealing with social conflict. Every­ one who comes into contact with the child parents, educators, childcare providers, healthcare providers has the potential to contribute to a child's attitudes towards vio­ lence, and propensity toward violent behav­ ior. Similarly, every institution that touches children's family, schools, mass media, com­ munity and religious organizations can con­ tribute positively to children's sense of safety and to their preference for alternatives to violence. Yoshikawa ( 1994) contends that early child­ hood intervention is important in preventing delinquency. Violence is learned. According to Powell et