The Victorian Department of Education commissioned this project as a baseline measure of traffic safety education prior to the commencement of a Teacher Professional Development Program in the traffic safety education area. Two surveys were conducted to measure the current level of traffic safety education in Victorian schools and to measure the attitudes of teachers towards traffic safety education. A mail-out survey to schools provided data concerning the use of 193 different traffic safety resources and activities in 444 primary and secondary schools in the three school sectors. When averaged across the whole sample these data indicate that traffic safety education takes up about 1.6 hours per week in primary schools and 55 minutes per week in secondary schools, summed over the whole school. Data are presented concerning the use of specific programs and the placement of traffic safety education in the curriculum. A telephone survey of 200 teachers was conducted to measure their attitudes to traffic safety education. Analysis of the results suggested that there were five groups of teachers based on their attitudes to this teaching area. Three groups of teachers had relatively positive attitudes to traffic safety education and two groups were more negative. These attitudes were reflected in their self-reported use of traffic safety education resources and activities and their level of inservice participation. (A)
Samenvatting