Associations between maternal childhood maltreatment and psychopathology and aggression during pregnancy and postpartum

OBJECTIVE: This study examines the association between maternal childhood maltreatment and psychopathology and aggression in intimate relationships during pregnancy and the postpartum period. METHOD: Forty-four pregnant women who were recruited from an obstetric clinic and local advertising periodical completed questionnaires about childhood maltreatment and psychopathology during their first trimester of pregnancy. Approximately 1 year after the birth of the child, 32 of the original participants completed these same questionnaires. Regression models were used to test the relationship between childhood maltreatment and psychopathology and aggression during pregnancy and 1 year postpartum. RESULTS: Sexual abuse and emotional neglect were related to psychopathology during pregnancy, and emotional neglect and physical abuse and neglect predicted poorer maternal outcomes 1 year postpartum. Contrary to expectations, physical abuse was related to less aggression during pregnancy, and emotional abuse was associated with less pathology postpartum. CONCLUSIONS: The results of this study indicate that childhood maltreatment is associated with poorer maternal mental health during pregnancy and 1 year postpartum and points to the need to improve targeting and treatment of psychopathology during this time.     

Classroom Management Self-Efficacy and Burnout: A Multivariate Meta-analysis

Like many in the human services professions, teachers are susceptible to the feelings of burnout due to their job demands, as well as interactions with students, colleagues, administrators, and parents. Many studies have identified teacher burnout as one of the crucial components influencing teacher attrition. It has been suggested that self-efficacy is a protective factor against burnout. By way of multivariate meta-analysis, we examined the evidence for classroom management self-efficacy (CMSE) in relation to the three dimensions of burnout: emotional exhaustion, depersonalization, and (lowered) personal accomplishment. Results from sixteen studies indicate that there is a significant relationship between classroom management self-efficacy and the three dimensions of burnout, suggesting that teachers with higher levels of CMSE are less likely to experience the feelings of burnout. Practical implications, as well recommendations for future research, are discussed.     

Major Survey Findings of Listening to MothersSM III: Pregnancy and Birth: Report of the Third National U.S. Survey of Women’s Childbearing Experiences

To understand the experiences and views of childbearing women in the United States and trends over time, Childbirth Connection carried out the third national Listening to Mothers survey among 2,400 women who gave birth in U.S. hospitals to a single baby from mid-2011 to mid-2012 and could participate in English. Harris Interactive conducted the survey using a validated methodology that includes data weighting to ensure that results closely reflect the target population. Results of the initial survey describe experiences from before pregnancy through the early postpartum period, and were reported in Listening to Mothers III: Pregnancy and Birth. A follow-up survey directed to the same participants explored postpartum experiences, attitudes about maternity care, and some additional pregnancy and birth items.     

Are there positive effects of having a sibling with special needs? Empathy and prosociality of twins of children with non-typical development

This study examined whether typically developing (TD) twins of non-TD children demonstrate enhanced empathy and prosociality. Of 778 Hebrew-speaking Israeli families who participated in a twin study, 63 were identified to have a non-TD child with a TD twin, and 404 as having both twins TD. TD twins of non-TD children (27% males) were compared to the rest of the cohort of TD children (46% males) on measures of empathy and prosociality. Participants were 11 years old. TD twins of non-TD children scored significantly higher than TD twins of TD children in a measure of cognitive empathy (d = .43). No differences were found in emotional empathy and prosociality. The specificity of the positive effect on cognitive empathy is discussed.     

Undergraduates’ conceptions of mathematics teaching and learning: an empirical study

Educational Studies in Mathematics - Previous research in mathematics education has explored teachers’ conceptions of mathematics and its teaching and learning, and how their instructional...     

Can You Hear Me Now? Social Listening as a Strategy for Understanding User Needs

Maintaining regular engagement with audiences through various forms of social media is becoming more important as library users and the general public increasingly rely on social media for news, updates, and feedback. While large corporations have been monitoring social media for more than a decade, libraries have recently begun to use social listening to stay abreast of trends and assess user needs as voiced directly by their communities. This column will explain what social listening is, explore concerns over its widespread application, consider examples of social media listening software currently available, and offer an overview of its application in library settings.     

Continuous improvement in the public school context: Understanding how educators respond to plan–do–study–act cycles

The last 5 years have witnessed growing support amongst government institutions and educational foundations for applying continuous improvement research (CIR) in school settings. CIR responds to the challenge of implementing effective educational innovations at scale by working with practitioners in local contexts to understand “what works, for whom, and under what conditions.” CIR works to achieve system improvement through the use of plan–do–study–act (PDSA) cycles, which are multiple tests of small changes. This comparative case study of two urban school districts examined how innovation design teams took up PDSA in their work to improve high school student outcomes, and their perceptions of PDSA as an approach to innovation development, adaptation, and implementation. Findings revealed both possibilities and challenges for implementing PDSA. Nearly all participants reported the value in PDSA, and participants pointed to connections to previous experiences and PDSA training as helping to build capacity. However, we found mixed levels of enthusiasm for actually conducting PDSA cycles, and capacity constraints regarding time and data collection.     

Single mothers' employment dynamics and adolescent well-being

The links between single mothers' employment patterns and change over time in the well-being of the mothers' adolescent children were investigated using the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth. Adolescents were ages 14 to 16 at baseline, and they and their mothers were followed for 2 years. Relative to being continuously employed in a good job, findings suggest that adolescents whose mothers lose a job without regaining employment show declines in mastery and self-esteem, those whose mothers are continuously employed in a bad job show an increased likelihood of grade repetition, and those whose mothers are either persistently unemployed or lose more than one job show an increased likelihood of school dropout. These effects are not explained by concomitant changes in family income.     

Processing of rapid auditory stimuli in school-age children referred for evaluation of learning disorders

Tallal hypothesized that reading disabled children have a domain-general deficit in processing rapidly occurring auditory stimuli that degrades speech perception, thereby limiting phonologic awareness and thus reading acquisition. She predicted they would be disproportionately affected by rapidly presented auditory stimuli. In this study, one hundred 7- to 11-year-old children with learning impairment (LI) and 243 non-learning impaired (NLI) children were evaluated on a two-tone auditory discrimination paradigm. LI committed more errors, but effects of timing were comparable. The same result was obtained for a subsample of good and poor readers. Task performance predicted reading, spelling, and calculation. Neural processes underlying perception of speech and other auditory stimuli may be less effective in poor readers; however, contrary to Tallal's hypothesis, rate may not be specifically affected.