Childbirth education for multiple pregnancy: part 1: prenatal considerations

Women with a multiple pregnancy have unique learning needs in preparing for birth. This paper explores the issues relevant to women with a multiple pregnancy to support a positive birth experience. One of the foundations of childbirth education and nursing care is to provide the individual woman and her family with knowledge regarding the birth process, what to expect, and how to cope with labor and birth. Education also focuses on caring for the newborns after birth and how to manage in the early days at home. However, traditional childbirth education classes, which meet in a series of evenings or Saturdays, may not meet the needs of women with a multiple pregnancy. In addition, because of the differences in care that exist for women with a multiple pregnancy, new paradigms for childbirth education are needed to meet the learning needs of these families. The purpose of this paper is to provide information to the childbirth educator on the differences in care women with a multiple pregnancy can expect and to suggest strategies to meet the childbirth education needs of these families.     

Childbirth education for parents experiencing pregnancy after perinatal loss

Expectant parents who have experienced previous perinatal loss have special concerns, which can be partially addressed by modifying prepared childbirth education courses. This article presents a review of current literature, highlighting the unique needs of expectant parents who have experienced previous pregnancy loss. Modifications to traditional childbirth education courses are suggested, which include addressing parents' grief, managing anxiety, and facilitating communication with health-care providers and others.     

Reducing prejudice: constructivist considerations for special education

ABSTRACT

How might teachers think about moving to challenge prejudice against persons with handicap? Drawing on Piaget's and Bateson's constructivist theories, prejudices are examined in terms of the processes by which they are formed within the individual, the role they play in identity, and the reasons they may be resistant to change. Consideration is then given to strategies which may be useful in inviting reconsideration of cognitive items of this type. Looking at the learner's experience these include certain types of questioning strategies and counterexamples. Looking at the teacher's experience a number of techniques are recommended including, neutrality, circular questioning, and parenthesising.     

Childbirth education outcomes: an integrative review of the literature

The purpose of this literature review was to identify and describe recent empirical studies of childbirth education outcomes and to identify areas for further study. The search produced 63 studies; only 12 met the inclusion criteria. The literature demonstrated inconclusive evidence regarding the effectiveness of childbirth education. None of the studies used a theoretical framework that proposed multiple factors, as opposed to childbirth education alone, that impact the outcomes. Health-focused versus illness-focused outcomes were also addressed.     

Childbirth education in the 21st century: an immodest proposal

Childbirth education was an important social movement in the 20th century but has lost its way in recent years. We describe the reasons for the dwindling importance of childbirth education and offer a proposal for reform that will align childbirth education with the needs of today's birthing mothers. Our plan will create "Centers for the Childbearing Year" (CCBYs) and a new model of childbirth educator, which we call the "birth coach." The CCBY is the place for women to go to for information and support related to fertility, pregnancy, childbirth, and newborn care; the birth coach combines the role of childbirth educator, doula, and postpartum caregiver. In creating a fresh model of childbirth education, we not only honor our pioneers but also rediscover the wisdom in community and relationship that childbirth offers us, and we learn in new ways to journey alongside each other to create new possibilities for birthing families.     

Helping hospitals change: part 2: childbirth education techniques to empower women

As the director of patient-care services for maternal-child health and clinical practice at two large, metropolitan hospitals, the author of this article outlines ways in which childbirth educators can empower women to receive the birth experience they want. Techniques include offering a special prepregnancy class, helping expectant women to formulate questions for their care providers, and encouraging women to express their perceptions of their birth experience by responding to their hospital's patient-satisfaction survey, writing letters, or nominating mother- and baby-friendly nurses for special recognition.     

Active and inclusive citizenship for women: democratic considerations for fostering lifelong education

In this paper a critical feminist theoretical framework is used to explore the challenges of creating democratic learning spaces that will foster active and inclusive citizenship for women. Three democratic considerations are addressed to assess how adult educators can create more inclusive opportunities for lifelong education for women. The first consideration is the need for a careful examination of structural inequalities that create disadvantages for women in pursuing lifelong education. The second consideration is the need to create a broader and more gender inclusive understanding of the scope of lifelong learning possibilities, so that women’s learning experiences are not devalued. The third consideration explores how to take up gender as a complex variable within the broader discourse of inclusion. This paper is informed by preliminary results from a current SSHRC (Social Science and Humanities Research Council) study on lifelong learning trajectories for women in Canada and a CCL (Canadian Council on Learning) study on active citizenship for women in Nova Scotia.     

Distance education and distance learning: some psychological considerations

Face‐to‐face education and distance education, viewed as differing sets of organisational provisions for the fostering of learning, emphasize different kinds of learning processes, and depend upon somewhat different psychological properties in learners. Nonetheless, all practical learning settings, whether they are labelled ‘school’, ‘adult education’, ‘distance education’, or something else, involve a mixture of face‐to‐face learning and distance learning. The psychological difference between the two kinds of setting is thus note purely qualitative in nature, but is also quantitative: for instance, certain learner characteristics which are useful in face‐to‐face learning (discussed in detail in the body of the present paper) are indispensible for distance learning, while certain processes which are at the heart of distance learning (also dis‐cusssed in detail later) are often given little emphasis in face‐to‐face settings, although they are in principle possible and even desirable there. The question thus arises of whether it would not be desirable to give more emphasis in face‐to‐face settings to psychologically desirable aspects of distance learning.     

Sociology of scientific knowledge and science education part 2: Laboratory life under the microscope

This article is the second of two that examine some of the claims of contemporary sociology of scientific knowledge (SSK) and the bearing of these claims upon the rationale and practice of science teaching. In the present article the celebrated work Laboratory Life of Latour and Woolgar is critically examined. Its radical, iconoclastic view of science is shown to be not merely without foundation but an extravagant deconstructionist nihilism according to which all science is fiction and the world is said to be socially constructed by negotiation. On this view, the success of a theory is not due to its intellectual merits or explanatory plausibility but to the capacity of its proponents to extract compliance from others. If warranted, such views pose a revolutionary challenge to the entire Western tradition of science and the goals of science education which must be misguided and unrealizable in principle. Fortunately, there is little reason to take these views seriously, though their widespread popularity is cause for concern among science educators.     

Needs assessment in adult education: tactical and strategic considerations

Although needs assessment methodologies have been readily available since the '40's considerable confusion persists about the nature and purpose for which they should be used. Many practitioners equate needs assessment with job or task analysis and thereby fail to derive much benefit from the effort they expend. Others, in trying to distinguish between internal “quasineeds” assessment and external “self-sufficiency” criteria inadvertently pose some questions for the nature of competency. Is it a process referent, a product referent, or both? This paper examines the differences between needs assessment and task analysis and demonstrates the utility of conceptualizing competency as the synthesis of the dichotomy of process and products through a Needs Based Education and Training (NEBEAT) model of curriculum design in adult education.     

Legal considerations concerning public support for private higher education

RESURGENT POLITICS AND EDUCATIONAL PROGRESSIVISM IN THE NEW SOUTH: NORTH CAROLINA, 1890–1913 by H. Leon Prather, Sr. Cranbury, NJ: Associated University Press, Inc., 1979. 303 pp. $20.00.

CHILD AND STORY: THE LITERARY CONNECTION by Kay E. Vandergrift. New York: Neal‐Schuman Publishers, Inc., 1980. 340 pp.

THE HUMANITIES IN AMERICAN LIFE, Report of the Rockefeller Commission on the Humanities. Berkeley, California: University of California Press, 1980. 205 pgs. $3.50 paperback, $12.50 cloth.

ON HIGHER EDUCATION: THE ACADEMIC ENTERPRISE IN AN ERA OF RISING STUDENT CONSUMERISM by David Riesman. San Francisco: Jossey‐Bass, 1980. xxxiv + 421 pp. $16.95.     

Citizenship education in England and Wales: theoretical critique and practical considerations

This paper presents a theoretical critique of citizenship education in England and Wales, as a means of raising pedagogical considerations for teachers, and policy issues for curriculum makers and planners. Drawing on a range of recent empirical studies, we construct an analysis of practice and suggest that differences between dominant models of citizenship in England and Wales owe much to their histories. We suggest that such differences create opportunities for new curriculum‐making practices as well as democratic possibilities in the context of citizenship education, at a time when curricula in both England and Wales are under revision. Considering school councils/forums as an exemplar of practice common to both contexts, we question the wisdom of schools employing a narrow conception of active citizenship, via forums, in order to demonstrate they are satisfying the relevant requirements of the Order for Citizenship in England, and aspects of the Personal and Social Education curriculum in Wales. While the exemplars are both from the UK context the arguments apply beyond these borders and to more general concerns regarding the development of global citizenship.     

Childbirth education and doula care during times of stress, trauma, and grieving

A collaborative, interspecialty volunteer program extending for nine months after September 11, 2001, provided free support and service to pregnant women widowed by the attacks on the World Trade Center. Participating providers studied the physiological and psychological effects of stress. Group sharing, discussions about the effects of emotions on labor progress, and other techniques were incorporated into sessions. The program's success suggests that childbirth educators should prepare all pregnant women to cope with stress. Subsequent national and international events have reinforced the importance of such training. The childbirth educator can also help by maintaining a referral list of local trauma counselors and other resources.