Browsing by Subject "Sexual exploitation"

Children and young people across the world are online more than ever. With this, comes the risk of experiencing online sexual harms and exploitation which can be sources of trauma and impact students’ well- being, mental health, behaviour, academic and life outcomes. Teachers can be trusted adults in their student’s lives with the ability to recognise these kinds of harms and abuse and offer effective support and intervention. Finland shows a steady increase in children and young people experiencing online child sexual harms such as online sexual harassment, grooming and exploitation and a rise in the media coverage of these issues. This seeks to discover student teacher perceptions of online child sexual harms and exploitation of children and young people, whilst examining what student teachers might need to be able to understand and respond more effectively. Data was collected with individual interviews that included open questions and action tasks with four student teachers from The University of Helsinki. The study was guided by trauma-informed theory. Interviews were analysed using a mixture of deductive and inductive approaches to thematic analysis. In doing so, three themes and five sub-themes were found. The results of this study were that student teacher participants showed varied perceptions of online sexual harms and exploitation, related to the nature of abuse, victim, and perpetrator characteristics. These perceptions influenced participant ability to recognise potentially harmful situations. Additionally, participants lacked formal training in these issues. Finally, participants expressed unanimous professional anxiety in terms of how to practically respond to incidents of online sexual harms and exploitation of students, indicating a critical need for teacher education programs at the University of Helsinki to provide a more comprehensive education for student teachers that addresses understanding, identifying, and responding to sexual harms and exploitation online.