Step 4: provides the birthing woman with freedom of movement to walk, move, assume positions of her choice: the coalition for improving maternity services:

Step 4 of the Ten Steps of Mother-Friendly Care insures that women have the freedom to walk, move, and assume positions of their choice during labor and birth. The rationales and the evidence in support of this step are presented.     

Reading Recovery: Exploring the Effects on First-Graders' Reading Motivation and Achievement

ABSTRACT

This study examined the effects of Reading Recovery on children's motivational levels, and how motivation may contribute to the effect of the intervention on literacy achievement. Prior studies concluded that Reading Recovery was positively associated with increased student motivation levels, but most of those studies were limited methodologically. The achievement and motivation levels before and after the intervention of Reading Recovery students and similarly low-performing first-grade students were compared using structural equation modeling. It was found that Reading Recovery had a .31 treatment effect on achievement after controlling for baseline achievement and motivational differences among the treatment and comparison students. Reading Recovery also was associated with greater average levels of posttest motivation, and motivation was found to mediate the treatment-achievement relationship. This study highlights how important it is for early reading interventions to consider the role motivation plays in literacy acquisition.     

School Reform and Restructuring: Does Performance Technology Have a Role?

There is now widespread agreement that America's schools are in serious trouble. However, there is little consensus regarding what should be done about it. The school reforms currently being suggested are the most radical since the elimination of the one room school. School reforms of the 1980s—personnel selection, job redesign, evaluation/ feedback, incentives, instructional technology, and organization rede-sign—are reviewed from a performance technology perspectivee Reasons for their lack of success are discussed, in particular the schools' lack of interest in instructional design and technology. The most likely future reforms, those that involve the organizational redesign of schools, are discussed along with the impact such changes would have on the potential for applying performance technology in the schools. The paper concludes with actions that performance technologists in both business and academic environments can take to encourage the application of their technologies in the schools.     

The Two Most Useful Approaches to Estimating Criterion‐Referenced Test Reliability in a Single Test Administration

In criterion‐referenced tests (CRTs), the traditional measures of reliability used in norm‐referenced tests (NRTs) have often proved problematic because of NRT assumptions of one underlying ability or competency and of variance in the distribution of scores. CRTs, by contrast, are likely to be created when mastery of the skill or knowledge by all or most all test takers is expected and thus little variation in the scores is expected. A comprehensive CRT often measures a number of discrete tasks that may not represent a single unifying ability or competence. Hence, CRTs theoretically violate the two most essential assumptions of classic NRT re liability theory and they have traditionally required the logistical problems of multiple test administrations to the same test takers to estimate reliability. A review of the literature categorizes approaches to reliability for CRTs into two classes: estimates sensitive to all measures of error and estimates of consistency in test outcome. For single test administration of CRTs Livingston's k²is recommended for estimating all measures of error, S_c is proposed for estimates of consistency in test outcome. Both approaches compared using data from a CRT exam and recommendations for interpretation and use are proposed.