The Effects of Maternal Alcohol Consumption and Cigarette Smoking during Pregnancy on Acoustic Cry Analysis

During the last trimester of pregnancy, 127 primiparous Irish mothers were interviewed to ascertain their history of alcohol and tobacco use. Confounding effects due to other drugs were not a factor in this sample. Mothers consumed an average of .21 ounces absolute alcohol (AA) per day, with 62% classified as moderate drinkers, 10.6% as heavy drinkers, and 26% as nondrinkers. Neurobehavioral status was measured using acoustic characteristics of the infant's cry, collected on the third day of life. Multiple regression analysis showed that more ounces AA per day was related to more dysphonation and higher first formant, while more cigarette smoking was related to higher pitch, higher second formant, and more variability in the second formant. Analysis of variance comparisons of these 3 alcohol groups demonstrated significant cry effects on infants of heavy drinking mothers.     

Infants at Social Risk: Maternal Depression and Family Support Services as Mediators of Infant Development and Security of Attachment

31 infants at high social risk due to the combined effects of poverty, maternal depression, and caretaking inadequacy were assigned to weekly home-visiting services. At 18 months infant age, the home-visited infants were compared with 2 groups of socioeconomically similar unserved infants on measures of infant development, infant attachment, mother-infant interaction, maternal depression, and maternal social contacts. Home-visited infants of depressed mothers outperformed unserved infants of depressed mothers by an average of 10 points on the Bayley Mental Scale and were twice as likely to be classified as securely attached, with unserved high-risk infants showing a high rate of insecure-disorganized attachments. Duration of services was positively correlated with maternal involvement at 12 months. Results of the study point both to the negative developmental consequences associated with severe social risk conditions and to the buffering effects of developmentally oriented home-visiting services for infants at greatest social risk.     

Academic health sciences librarians' contributions to institutional animal care and use committees

The study gathered data about librarians'' membership in institutional animal care and use committees (IACUCs) and their professional activities supporting animal researchers. Libraries affiliated with medical schools that were members of the Association of American Medical Colleges were surveyed. A survey was distributed via library directors'' email discussion lists and direct email messages. Sixty surveys were completed: 35 (58%) reported that librarians performed database searches for researchers, and 22 (37%) reported that a librarian currently serves on the IACUC. The survey suggests that academic health sciences librarians provide valuable, yet underutilized, services to support animal research investigators.     

Complicating the World of Reading Assessment: Toward Better Assessments for Better Teaching

In this article, we share with readers our hopes, fears, and predictions for reading assessment in American schools at a critical policy juncture—the production of new assessments to measure achievement of the Common Core State Standards. It isn't just Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers and Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium in play. There is a new stream of progressive-minded pedagogical reform rekindling the fire for higher-order thinking, project-based learning, and learning that transfers to new and different situations and problems. This is a perfect storm—a genuine opportunity to change the course of assessment for accountability and classroom decision-making. Our hope is that readers will find our perspectives useful as we collectively avail ourselves of this unique opportunity.     

Practice Makes Practice: Learning to Teach in Teacher Education

In this article, we argue that teaching is and should be a central element to learning to teach, particularly as teacher education once again turns toward practice. From this perspective, we must elaborate how such a shift addresses the need to bridge the gap between knowledge for teaching and knowledge from teaching, between theory and practice, and among university courses and fieldwork. If the intent of such a shift is to fundamentally change the preparation of teachers, we argue that it requires teacher education programs to do more than increase the amount of time candidates spend in clinical field placements. It requires, we argue, that teacher educators engage in simultaneous innovation in three related, but distinct aspects of program design and implementation: organizational structures and policies, content and curriculum, and teacher education pedagogy. Without such dynamic engagement, the practice-turn will go the way of many past reforms in teacher education—it will be symbolic but not significant or meaningful.     

Is the environmental literacy of university students measurable?

We report the development and piloting of an evaluative instrument and process for monitoring the environmental literacy (EL) of undergraduate students in one large research-led university in New Zealand. The instrument addresses knowledge, affect and competencies in the general area of EL in line with this institution’s adoption of EL as a graduate attribute (or in a US context, a general-education learning outcome, and something to be fostered throughout a student’s education). The instrument and associated processes were designed to fit within conventional institutional mechanisms that manage student feedback on the quality of teaching. The instrument was tested with more than 600 students from more than eight programmes over the course of a year and its use stressed that students were anonymous within the survey. We conclude that evaluating (or in a US context, assessing) the extent to which students acquire EL is an achievable objective and is a reasonable expectation for any higher education institution that claims to foster this attribute.     

Teaching for deeper political learning: a design experiment

Is in-depth political learning possible in college-preparatory courses known for curricular breadth at an accelerated pace plus a high-stakes exam? A multidisciplinary research team conducted design-based implementation research (DBIR) for seven years across three school systems for the purpose of achieving deeper learning in an ‘advanced’ high school government and politics course. This article reports findings from the final year of research and development. The design centres on cyclical learning, projects (simulated political processes) and strategic use of texts as resources for learning the curriculum. Quantitative analysis shows comparable achievement to students in traditional classrooms on the high-stakes summative assessment despite the dramatic departure from test-prep instruction. Qualitative analyses focus on two of the design elements: learning from simulations and learning from text. The first allowed students to ‘experience’ political beliefs, institutions, and conflict, although simulated; the second required students to learn subject matter not only from simulations and teacher lectures but from texts, too. The discussion shows how these two in combination with cyclical learning required skilful attention to content selection. We conclude that when deeper learning is the goal, content selection cannot be elided or presumed, particularly with respect to the articulation of depth and breadth in curriculum and instruction.