A Gap Between Children’s Rights and Curricular Content in Health, Social Care, and Teacher Education Programs: An Exploratory Cross-Sectional Study

Abstract

Introduction Exposure to child maltreatment is a social and public health challenge that will require interprofessional collaboration to overcome. Evidence indicates that professional students in health, social care, and teacher education programs receive inadequate training in recognizing and responding to child maltreatment. The aims are to 1) assess the extent to which these students found that their uniprofessional education and a large-scale interprofessional learning (IPL) course had taught them about children in general, children’s rights, and vulnerable/at-risk children; and 2) explore differences in student responses according to age and educational background. Methods A cross-sectional study. Students (n=2811) completed questionnaires prior to or after IPL courses held in 2019 and 2020 (hybrid case-based, small-group, on-campus courses targeting children, young people, and their families as end users). Findings The majority (>90%) agreed that it was important to learn about child-related topics. Only 4.3% disagreed that it was important to learn about vulnerable/at-risk children. Health and social care students enhanced their insight into all the child-related topics (p<0.001) after the IPL course. Teacher education and child welfare students reported decreased insight into children in general (p<0.001 in 2019 and p=0.008 in 2020) but increased insight into vulnerable/at-risk children in 2020 (p=0.001). According to stratified analyses, there was a significantly increased insight into all child-related topics among physiotherapy and Mensendieck physiotherapy students (p<0.001), decreased insight into children in general among teacher education students (p<0.02), and increased insight into vulnerable/at-risk children among teacher education students (p ≤ 0.001) in both 2019 and 2020. Age was of minor importance. The response rates ranged from 16.0% to 36.0%. Conclusion After the IPL course, the health and social care students significantly enhanced their insight into child-related topics, whereas the students in teacher education and child welfare gained increased insight into vulnerable/at-risk children.

Breakout Rooms Serve as a Suitable Tool for Interprofessional Pre-Service Online Training among Students within Health, Social, and Education Study Programs

“…These findings are in agreement with studies that have shown that teachers claim they lack competence and confidence and that they experience uncertainty about their role concerning pupils with experiences of domestic violence [17,18,76,77]. Teacher education study programs lack a curriculum developed for vulnerable children and children at risk [20,21,28,64,65,[78][79][80][81][82][83][84][85][86][87][88][89][90][91][92]. Teachers are mandated to report child maltreatment, yet some teachers are reluctant to make such a report [93].…”

“…The IPL initiative has previously been presented in detail [59][60][61][62][63][64][65][66][67]. In short, the IPL course is part of an educational intervention (Interprofessional Interaction with Children and Youth [INTERACT]) that aims to provide students with knowledge of and experience with interprofessional cooperation as well as interprofessional experience [59,68].…”

“…Strengths and limitations of this repeated cross-sectional study have been outlined in detail previously [60][61][62][63][64][65][66]127]. In short, our study's major strengths include the large cohort size, the repeated cross-sectional design, the different educational backgrounds of the participants, the inclusion of students from three different years of study, and the anonymous data collection method.…”

Is Interprofessional Learning Only Meant for Professions Within Healthcare? - A Qualitative Analysis of Associations with the Term Interprofessional Collaborative Learning Among Professional Students

“…As previously described, students in teacher education and child welfare programmes might be particularly interested in all topics involving children. 21 Self-selection bias cannot, therefore, be excluded, as respondents with strong opinions—in either direction—cannot be excluded (yet the diversity in our sample enhances the robustness of the findings). The anonymous data collection and inclusion of different educational backgrounds are the major strengths of this study, and to the best of our knowledge, no previous comparable study has been published.…”

“…In a quantitative follow-up study, we explored the extent to which the IPL first-year students learnt about the World Health Organisation's (WHO) core IPL competencies (roles and responsibilities, values and ethics, interprofessional communication and teams and teamwork). 21 , 17 While the majority learnt something about WHO competencies after the IPL course, the teacher and child welfare students achieved the best learning outcomes, including new knowledge about WHO competencies. 19 All the enrolled students were divided into pre-defined IPL groups each consisting of eight students representing health, social care and teacher education programs, aiming to facilitate that the students should learn with, from and about each other.…”