Outcomes for Women and Infants Following Assisted Conception: Implications for Perinatal Education,Care, and Support

Assisted conception is becoming an increasingly more common treatment option for women and couples who experience fertility problems. Links have been made in the literature between assisted conception and a greater incidence of pregnancy or birth complications, low birth weight or premature babies, and babies with congenital abnormalities. In addition, evidence suggests that the experience of assisted conception may influence the development of early mothering relationships and impact parenting adjustment. Although this commentary article does not strategically review all available literature, it provides an overview of the health issues that women and families undergoing assisted conception have experienced or may experience. Through raising awareness and promoting discussion of these issues, practitioners will be better equipped to provide informed education and support.     

Learning to mark: exemplars,dialogue and participation in assessment communities

The problems of shifting from norm-referenced assessment to criterion-referenced assessment have been identified by several scholars in recent years. These important critiques touch on a number of areas, but neglect a key question about how assessors learn to accomplish what Shay calls a ‘socially situated interpretive act'. Research that does exist tends to focus on salaried, full-time academics. This overlooks the heterogeneity of the academic labour force in higher education and the substantial contribution made by contract (hourly-paid) lecturers, particularly in applied disciplines such as Business and Management. This study explores how nine newcomers to a UK Business School – including salaried and contract staff – attempt to understand local assessment practice. We use a situated learning lens to analyse their diary entries and interviews about their experiences of learning to mark. Drawing on scholars such as Sadler, we examine the suggestion that exemplars are important for newcomers coming to understand local assessment practice. We argue for the fundamental importance of dialogue about exemplars and other aspects of practice, both to develop inter-subject understandings of assessment ‘anchor points' and also to foster among newcomers (and especially contract lecturers) a greater sense of participating in, and being valued by, the local assessment community.     

Developing networks of grass-roots science curriculum action

This paper describes an ongoing process of participatory curriculum development. It outlines some of the tensions which need to be explored in science curriculum development: debates about the nature of science, of society, of school science content and of learning theories. The process whereby action can arise from this debate is also explored. An example will be outlined of a network of science curriculum action which has developed from the work of a range of science education projects in Natal, South Africa. Specializations: science curriculum development from primary to tertiary level. Specializations: inservice primary science teacher development. Specializations: inservice teacher development, biology education. Specializations: environmental education, teacher development. Specializations: environmental education, teacher development.     

Depression and Anxiety in the Postnatal Period: An Examination of Infants’ Home Language Environment,Vocalizations, and Expressive Language Abilities

This longitudinal study investigated the effects of maternal emotional health concerns, on infants’ home language environment, vocalization quantity, and expressive language skills. Mothers and their infants (at 6 and 12 months; 21 mothers with depression and or anxiety and 21 controls) provided day-long home-language recordings. Compared with controls, risk group recordings contained fewer mother–infant conversational turns and infant vocalizations, but daily number of adult word counts showed no group difference. Furthermore, conversational turns and infant vocalizations were stronger predictors of infants’ 18-month vocabulary size than depression and anxiety measures. However, anxiety levels moderated the effect of conversational turns on vocabulary size. These results suggest that variability in mothers’ emotional health influences infants’ language environment and later language ability.     

Understanding business interests in international large-scale student assessments: a media analysis of The Economist,Financial Times,and Wall Street Journal

The media analysis is situated in the larger body of studies that explore the varied reasons why different policy actors advocate for international large-scale student assessments (ILSAs) and adds to the research on the fast advance of the global education industry. The analysis of The Economist, Financial Times, and Wall Street Journal covers publications on ‘PISA’, ‘TIMSS’, and related search items over the period 1996–2016. The three media outlets vary in terms of ILSA reporting. The Economist and Financial Times tend to focus on PISA, whereas the Wall Street Journal pays greater attention to TIMSS than PISA. The content analysis of 59 articles yields interesting results about how the business-oriented readership of the three media outlets frames public education and why it sees education as a profitable business opportunity. The three most common narratives, reflecting the business logic, are the following: (i) public education is in crisis; (ii) there is no correlation between spending and education outcome; and (iii) school accountability, teacher performance, and decentralisation represent the most effective policies to improve the quality of education. Drawing on these three common narratives, the financial media outlets present a particular vision of how to improve education; a vision in which the private sector is supposed to play a major role.     

Digital Ethics in Social Work Education

ABSTRACT

Attention has been given to the revised National Association of Social Workers (NASW) Code of Ethics that guides social worker use of technology. The revision of the NASW Code of Ethics has signaled a transition in the profession toward ethical online practice using modern techniques and contemporary tools. Practicing social workers are applying these new ethical standards, and many social work educators are doing so when using information and communication technologies with students. However, little research focuses on teaching social work students about digital ethics and professional online conduct. This paper explores the importance of preparing social work students for ethical online behavior.     

Gendered perceptions of typical engineers across specialties for engineering majors

Young women do not choose to be engineers nearly as often as young men, and they tend to cluster in particular specialties when they do. We examine these patterns and the role of gender schemas as applied to perceptions of typical engineers in understanding the choices that women make in terms of engineering specialties. We use Part 1 of two waves of survey data collected from first-year engineering students at a large Midwestern university in the fall of 2014. Respondents scored typical engineers on 60 items from the Bem Sex-Role Inventory [Bem, S. L. 1974. “The Measurement of Psychological Androgyny.” Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology 42: 155–162]. Preliminary results show that women consider the typical engineer to be more masculine compared to the impressions gathered from men. Additionally, engineering gender schemas predict some specialty areas but not all, suggesting that gendered perceptions may not affect choice of specialty. Our results provide insight into the decisions that women make once entering engineering.     

On the validity and sensitivity of the phonics screening check: erratum and further analysis

Duff, Mengoni, Bailey and Snowling (Journal of Research in Reading, 38: 109–123; 2015) evaluated the sensitivity and specificity of the phonics screening check against two reference standards. This report aims to correct a minor data error in the original article and to present further analysis of the data. The methods used are calculation of predictive values of the phonics screening check in addition to sensitivity and specificity, and evaluation of agreement between the reference tests. Predictive values are important indicators of screening test quality. The positive predictive value of the phonics check is low (0.31) when compared with a standardised reading test but high (0.84) when compared with teachers' phonic phases judgements, reflecting poor agreement (kappa = 0.27) between reference tests. Results have implications for practice in terms of choice of reference standard and choice of threshold criterion for children to pass the screening check. Longitudinal data are needed to assess the predictive validity and utility of the check. What is already known about this topic:

• The importance of phonics in learning to read is widely acknowledged.
• The phonics screening check was introduced into U.K. schools in 2012 to ensure that all children develop phonic decoding skills.
• Estimates of the sensitivity and specificity of the phonics screening check, compared with two established ‘reference’ measures, were reported by Duff et al. ( 2015 ).

What this paper adds:

• We correct a minor error in the report of the original data by Duff et al. ( 2015 ).
• We draw attention to the importance of including predictive values, alongside sensitivity and specificity, in the evaluation of screening test validity. We also propose an alternative statistic for comparing the two reference measures.
• We show that applying this further analysis to the data in Duff et al. ( 2015 ) reveals the following: (i) the numbers of incorrect (false positive and false negative) outcomes in the phonics check and (ii) the marked difference in these numbers depending on the choice of reference measure.

Implications for theory, policy or practice:

• Reports of screening test validity should include positive and negative predictive values.
• A fundamental consideration for evaluating the validity of the phonics screening check is the choice of reference measure.
• Longitudinal data are needed to assess the predictive validity and utility of the phonics check.