Educational Research Volume 40 Number 1 Spring 1998 The effects of brief exposure and of classroom teaching on attitudes children express towards facial disfigurement in peers

Summary

This report describes a controlled study of the impact of the pilot use of an education pack on primary school pupils’ attitudes to facial disfigurement. Projective materials were used to investigate their perceptions in terms of a hierarchical list of educational objectives ‐‐ awareness, knowledge, understanding, acceptance and commitment. There were significant changes in score in the control schools, as well as the project schools. All statistically significant changes, and all changes relating to disfigured children, were in the desired direction. In response to photographs showing disfigurement, children in the pilot schools consistently improved their scores by a greater margin than those in the control schools. But this difference reached statistical significance only for the Knowledge objective. There was no difference between the groups in relation to the Commitment objective. The results are discussed in terms of the impact of brief exposure and of classroom teaching. The findings have implications for decisions among different strategies of intervention that might be adopted in schools using the materials.

Keywords:

• facial disfigurement
• person perception
• children's attitudes