Maternal antenatal attachment style and potential fetal abuse

OBJECTIVE: Maternal antenatal emotional attachment (MAEA) to the fetus has been proposed as an important factor for the emergence of harm to the unborn child. The present study investigated whether MAEA was associated with self-reported intent to harm the fetus. METHOD: Forty pregnant women, referred for psychological evaluation, completed a self-report measure of MAEA, the Millon Clinical Multiaxial Inventory-2 (MCMI-2) and confidential self-report questions on irritation with the fetus, urge to harm the fetus and predicted future loss of control with the child. Interview data was used to determine the mothers' adult attachment styles. RESULTS: (1) Negative preoccupied MAEA was associated with increased likelihood of reported irritation with the fetus, preoccupied adult attachment, borderline, histrionic, paranoid personality dimensions and symptoms of anxiety, mood disturbances and depression. (2) Negative disinterested MAEA was associated with a dismissing adult attachment, narcissistic, antisocial, aggressive-sadistic and passive-aggressive personality dimensions, alcohol dependence, but not self-report intention to harm the fetus. CONCLUSION: The findings are discussed in terms of their implications for understanding difficulties which may emerge in mother-fetus bonding and the identification of and interventions for mothers who report an intention to harm the fetus.     

JEWISH TEXTS,EDUCATION AND IDENTITY: INSEPARABLE

The study of traditional Jewish texts is perhaps the single most critical and engaging activity in Jewish education. Students spend the greater part of their classroom time delving into this source material, much of it ancient, some of it recent, in order to gain a better understanding of their heritage and how it relates to them in profound and in routine ways. Jewish educators are deeply aware of the importance of textual study in the curriculum, and it is their concern and their children's needs that were addressed by the 1987 Conference on Jewish Texts, sponsored by the Melton Center at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. More than 20 educators and psychologists were invited to Jerusalem from widely scattered sites, mostly North American and Israeli, to attend a series of meetings where some presented and all discussed the papers that appear in the present volume. The statements range in substance from the philosophical to the pedagogical and from the original to the traditionally derivative interpretation of textual sources in educational contexts. All are intended to bring a fresh perspective on issues that are as old and vital as Jewish education per se.     

Higher-order units in reading instruction

Gibson and her colleagues have presented arguments and evidence suggesting that the most appropriate unit to teach in reading is neither the single letter nor the whole word but a higher-order unit determined from examining grapheme-phoneme correspondences. The present study employed a computer analysis of the most frequently occurring (approximately 18,000) words in the English language. All letter strings from two to seven letters in length (here after called ngrams) were output with all the words in which the ngram appeared printed beneath the ngram. In addition type and token frequencies of each ngram were calculated and printed in separate rank order and alphabetic lists. Preliminary analysis of the consistency of mappings of various ngrams suggests that many are potentially useful for reading instruction. Current research with the computer is designed to extend the preliminary analysis.     

Evaluating the Operational Feasibility of Using Subsets of Items to Recommend Minimal Competency Cut Scores

Establishing cut scores using the Angoff method requires panelists to evaluate every item on a test and make a probability judgment. This can be time-consuming when there are large numbers of items on the test. Previous research using resampling studies suggest that it is possible to recommend stable Angoff-based cut score estimates using a content-stratified subset of ?45 items. Recommendations from earlier work were directly applied in this study in two operational standard-setting meetings. Angoff cut scores from two panels of raters were collected at each study, wherein one panel established the cut score based on the entire test, and another comparable panel first used a proportionally stratified subset of 45 items, and subsequently used the entire test in recommending the cut scores. The cut scores recommended for the subset of items were compared to the cut scores recommended based on the entire test for the same panel, and a comparable independent panel. Results from both studies suggest that cut scores recommended using a subset of items are comparable (i.e., within one standard error) to the cut score estimates from the full test.     

Laying the Groundwork for a Licensure Assessment

Licensure is a strict form of practice regulation: People must first earn a license before they may legally engage in professional practice. Typically, the last hurdle in the licensure process is the passing of an assessment of skills (responsibilities) and knowledge important for competent beginning professional practice. A content-oriented approach to validation is often applied to licensure assessments, and implementing a job analysis is a critical component in such a validation strategy. The job analysis conducted to define the content domain for the School Leaders Licensure Assessment—a licensure assessment for school principals—is described. Content experts first defined responsibilities and knowledge areas believed to be important for competent, beginning professional practice. The survey responses of 2,460 school principals confirmed these judgments. The methods and results of the job analysis are discussed.