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Muddling Through: The Procedural Marginalization of Child Abuse ROSONNA TITE Memorial University of Newfoundland ABSTRACT: Although a good deal of attention has been given to persuading teachers to report cases of child abuse to a Children's Aid Society (CAS), the difficulties associated with reporting procedures have generally been overlooked. This neglect of the procedu- ral issues has often meant that teachers have come under attack for failing to respond to abuse, although the procedures themselves, and the school context in which decisions about reporting take shape, have escaped some careful scrutiny. This paper draws on data collected as part of a larger study of Ontario women teachers. Information from 264 elementary teachers (mostly female) and 47 principals (mostly male) was collected in three phases: exploratory interviews, a survey, and follow-up interviews. A key part of the survey involved the difficulties associated with reporting to the principal and the CAS. Although the findings illustrate that teachers do not intentionally avoid their reporting role, they also demonstrate that almost half of teachers' suspicions never make it past the principals' desk. The procedural process is compficated by teachers' percep- tion of the kind of CAS response they anticipate, and by the idea that principals can ade- quately handle reports while safeguarding teachers' daily work with children and their families. Beyond the procedural level, these Findings suggest mandatory reporting is not entirely compatible with the work of the school and call for a theoretical assessment of the school's role in promoting the acceptance of family violence. KE~COPdgS: child abuse, teachers, reporting procedures Although a great deal of attention has been given to persuading teachers to detect the symptoms of child abuse and report suspicious cases to a Children's Aid Society (CAS), it is difficult to connect teachers' reporting behaviour to what has been written in the sociology of education. The main problem is the view that teachers are particularly well-placed for playing an active surveillance role, while consistently overlooking those features of the school that pose prob- lems for the effective implementation of reporting procedures. This neglect of the school context has meant not only that teachers have come under criticism for failing to live up to their reporting responsibilities, but also that the school Interchange, Vol. 25/1, 87-108, 1994. ?9 1994 Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands. 87