Promoting, protecting, and supporting normal birth

In this professional paper, published by Lamaze International and reprinted here with permission, Lamaze International identifies six care practices-adapted from the work of the World Health Organization-that promote, protect, and support normal birth. The six care practices are: labor begins on its own; freedom of movement throughout labor; continuous labor support; no routine interventions; non-supine (e.g., upright or side-lying) positions for birth; and no separation of mother and baby with unlimited opportunity for breastfeeding. Evidence to support each care practice is presented. Health-care providers and places of birth are encouraged to adopt these care practices as standards of care. Additionally, women are encouraged to choose health-care providers and places of birth whose care practices promote, protect, and support normal birth.     

Professional community and the problem of high school reform

A two-year qualitative study of mathematics and English teachers in two urban comprehensive high schools investigated how teacher community serves as resource for teacher development and school reform. A school engaged in whole-school reform sustained high teacher commitment and school-level community by constituting professional community strongly at the school level, but its departments displayed varying capacity and disposition to examine problems of teaching and learning at the classroom level. In the second school, innovative teacher communities were constituted strongly at the department level in English and mathematics, but suffered problems of stress and turnover due to weak organizational supports for teacher development and school reform. Findings point both to the potential contribution of professional communities situated in subject departments and the challenge of capitalizing on such communities to advance whole-school reform. The study suggests complex relationships among organizational context, teacher community, teacher development, and institutional reform.     

Treating abused children: Some clinical and research aspects of work carried out by the national advisory centre of the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children in the United Kingdom

A study of the initial phase of intensive work with families indicated that whilst outreach techniques had dramatically reduced physical injury there was long-term distortion in the child's relationship with mother (parent) less amenable to change. The most recent phase of work has concentrated on direct treatment for the abused child, using a multidisciplinary team that includes a play specialist and child psychotherapist in addition to the social workers involved. Out of a total number of 66 children seen between April 1977 and December 1979 it was alarming to find that almost all were emotionally disturbed; even if the abuse did not reoccur they remained with considerable problems. The study highlights the degree of emotional disturbance suffered by these abused children and how they can be helped by focusing on their particular treatment needs. It is important to assess all children in the family situation and not to miss the quiet, depressed, withdrawn child who might not have been the subject of the initial referral. In some instances the needs of the child may outweigh those of the family and the focus of treatment must be on the child.     

Iraqi,Syrian, and Palestinian Refugee Adolescents' Beliefs About Parental Authority Legitimacy and Its Correlates

This study examined intra‐ and interindividual variations in parental legitimacy beliefs in a sample of 883 Arab refugee adolescents (M_age = 15.01 years, SD = 1.60), 277 Iraqis, 275 Syrians, and 331 Palestinians in Amman, Jordan. Confirmatory factor analyses showed distinct latent factors for moral–conventional, prudential, and personal legitimacy items. Older adolescents rated legitimacy lower for personal issues, but higher for prudential issues. Beliefs were associated with socioeconomic status (fathers' education, family size), particularly for personal issues, but were more pervasively associated with displacement‐related experiences. Greater war trauma was associated with less prudential legitimacy for all youth and more authority legitimacy over moral–conventional issues for Syrian youth. Greater hopefulness was associated with more authority legitimacy over all but personal issues.     

School Start Time Change: An In‐Depth Examination of School Districts in the United States

In response to the scientific evidence documenting both profound developmental changes in sleep and circadian biology during adolescence and the myriad of negative health, performance, and safety outcomes risks associated with chronic sleep loss, at least 70 public school districts in the United States, representing approximately 1,000 schools, have successfully implemented a delay in high school start times. However, despite the compelling evidence supporting school start time change as a key strategy in addressing the epidemic of adolescent sleep loss, many school districts across the country with early high school start times have not considered the option to implement later bell schedules for adolescents. Moreover, while the current scientific literature has clearly documented the positive outcomes associated with delayed high school start times, these studies contain limited information regarding the process by which school districts consider, approve and implement bell schedule changes. Thus, this in‐depth examination of those school districts that have been successful in changing their bell schedules is intended to support the efforts of other districts in various stages of contemplating this measure. We utilized a multi‐pronged approach (literature review, case studies, telephone interviews, online survey) to summarize the experiences of school districts across the United States in regard to challenges faced, strategies employed, and lessons learned in the hope that this information will be a useful tool for other school districts looking to chart a course forward to promote the health, safety, and academic opportunities of their students.     

Does maternal employment influence poor children’s social development?

Various initiatives over the past 40 years have aimed to strengthen children’s early learning and social development. One policy theory—manifest in recent welfare reforms—postulates that requiring single mothers to work more outside the home will advance children’s well-being. We first examine whether young children’s social development is related to maternal employment among 405 women who entered welfare-to-work programs in 1998. For girls, age 24–42 months, we found that their mother’s recent employment duration was significantly associated with a lower incidence of aggressive behavior and inattentiveness, measured by two scales from the Child Behavior Checklist (CBCL 2/3). Yet these relationships with employment were weaker than more robust associations observed for proximal child-rearing practices, including the frequency of reading with the child, enforcing a regular bedtime, the propensity to spank the child, as well as levels of maternal depression. We then assess whether broader measures of the mother’s economic security help to predict these proximal determinants of development. We observed that food security and indicators of job quality consistently predicted the proximal factors. Structural equation models (SEM) provided additional evidence that these broader indicators of economic security, but not recent employment per se, operated through parenting practices and maternal depression to influence girls’ and boys’ social development. These results are consistent with recent findings from random-assignment experiments, showing that employment gains rarely affect child outcomes unless mothers’ income and broader economic security also improve.     

What starts to happen to assessment when teachers learn about their children’s informal learning?

Classroom assessment practices are greatly influenced by national and local policies on assessment. Typically, these include accountability requirements for schools to evidence and report their students’ learning in the form of specific learning outcomes, calibrated against national benchmark standards of achievement and progression. An implication for teachers is that their understanding of children’s learning is influenced by an official curriculum that is more likely to be weighted towards particular policy priorities, and desired learning outcomes. This means the knowledge, skills and understanding that children develop outside school are less likely to be included in classroom assessment measures or judgments about desirable progress and achievement. This article explores what happens to teachers’ thinking when they learn about their children’s informal learning outside school and begin to relate to learners in a different way. The findings reported here from a New Zealand three-year longitudinal study identified possibilities for teachers to assess expanded conceptions of children’s learning within the classroom, even though the pressures of assessment against National Standards were ever present. We argue that teachers engaging with knowledge of their students’ informal learning act as a catalyst to rethink and re-conceptualise learning more broadly. Incorporating a strong student voice component in assessment, together with a focus on ipsative assessment, enables teachers to mitigate some of the unintended educational consequences of assessment accountability policies and practices.     

Creating an LNG ready worker: British Columbia’s blueprint for extraction education

Since 2011, the government of British Columbia (BC) has focused on building the Canadian province’s economy through the development of a Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) sector. In service of this endeavour, the government launched the Skills for Jobs Blueprint, which attempts to more clearly align BC’s education system with resource extraction industries. In this paper, I argue that at the heart of this policy is the idea of education for, through, and as extraction. Conceptually, ‘extraction education’ focuses on supply (what we can take out of the earth, institutions, and individuals) rather than demand (what is needed to put into the educational system to meet needs of the land, institutions, communities, and individuals), and is problematic on environmental, economic, employment, equity, and educational fronts. In theorising ‘extraction education’ I extend Freire’s ideas on ‘banking education’ and briefly explore dialogic, problem-posing counters to it.     

Questions from our readers: commentary on "lamaze in the 21st century"

In response to Lamaze International's latest position paper, "Lamaze in the 21st Century," the author discusses the concept of normal birth and identifies the need for an advocacy effort in support of normal birth as the standard procedure.