Pnina Klein

Bar-Ilan University Deeply Mourns the Passing of Prof. Pnina Klein

Bar-Ilan University Prof. Pnina Klein, winner of the 2011 Israel Prize in Education Research, died yesterday following a battle with cancer.  She was 69.

A Full Professor at the Churgin School of Education, Prof. Klein was one of the world's premier experts in early childhood education, developing research-based models for educational care and enrichment which focused on infant-adult interactions. Her research, dealing with early intervention in education, made important contributions to the field in Israel and around the world, and brought her recognition among leading international researchers.

Prof. Klein was born on November 20, 1945 in Tarnów, Poland. The daughter of Holocaust survivors, she was the first baby born after the war into a family that had lost all its children. She immigrated to Israel aboard the "Negba" Ship with her parents, the late Rachel and Dov Steibel, who instilled in her a commitment to excel and contribute to the State of Israel. At the age of 16 she graduated from high school, with honors, and was accepted to study psychology and biology at Bar-Ilan University. Later, during her graduate studies, she worked in educational psychological services in Tel Aviv's Hatikva neighborhood. There she was exposed to children at risk and became interested in the development of early intervention programs for these children.

Upon completion of her Master's degree, Prof. Klein was awarded a scholarship toward her doctoral degree in education at the University of Rochester in New York. Her research focused on the impact of malnutrition in infancy on the development of learning and thinking skills in school. Although she was a young researcher at the beginning of her academic career, she won a research scholarship from the prestigious U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH). Her work garnered much attention in professional literature on the subject.

Prof. Klein devoted much of her forty-year career to developing methods for assessing the quality of adult-child interactions in early childhood and for translating them into intervention programs designed to enhance the emotional, social and cognitive development of young children. Improving the quality of parental mediation vastly improves the child's cognitive performance, as well as social and emotional behavior, research has shown. Much of her work focused on children with developmental disabilities, children from low-income families and gifted children.

Prof. Klein's work revolved around two basic concepts which she defined as "mental diet" and "literacy of interaction". Mental diet refers to the "ingredients" a child should receive from the adults who interact with him or her, and what types of behaviors are necessary in order to prepare him or her for future learning. She and her team designed a method of creating a profile of a child's mental diet in order to develop an intervention program designed to either introduce missing elements or strengthen existing elements in that mental diet. Literacy of interaction refers to the ability to read, understand and decode interactions between children and adults and decide what needs to be built in order to enhance the interaction and help the child benefit from future experiences in learning. "I think my mental diet was composed of a lot of love and caring, which probably enhanced in me the need to express it and do something for others," she once said.

The More Intelligent and Sensitive Child (MISC) Program developed by Prof. Klein was adopted by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) as the tool for early intervention in combination with medical treatment for AIDS-infected children in Africa. The MISC Program, designed for children with developmental disabilities, children from low-income families and gifted children, has proven effective in improving the cognitive, psychosocial and emotional development of disadvantaged children. MISC provides an intervention program individually tailored to each child based on the analysis of parent-child interactions and using naturally occurring situations and objects in the home environment. Her book Early Intervention: Cross-Cultural Implications of a Mediational Approach summarizes her research on the MISC program and its implementation in six cultures.

Prof. Klein's work has also been adopted by governments and agencies around the world and used as models of intervention with thousands – if not millions – of children. Teams from countries such as Zimbabwe, Ethiopia, Norway, Sweden, Holland, Belgium, the United Kingdom, and the United States have applied, or tailored, her models to their specific needs and cultures. In Israel her work has been applied with the assistance of the Ministry of Education, Ministry of Health and the Ministry of Industry and Trade. Her work has also received support from the U.S.-based Harris Foundation, Bader Foundation and Pitt Foundation. Since 1988 she served as Director of the Edward I. and Fannie Baker Center for the Study of Development Disorders in Infants and Young Children at Bar-Ilan University.

In 1984-5 Prof. Klein was invited by the U.S. National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) to participate in a study tracking babies at risk for developmental problems. The purpose of the study was to identify the specific elements of parental behavior which predict developmental and learning difficulties in children. In the framework of this study, which was conducted in Washington, D.C., Prof. Klein implemented the methods of measurement she developed to evaluate quality of interaction. It was found that her formula was the most effective in identifying specific problems in adult-child interactions, which predicted developmental difficulties in the population being studied.

In 1987 she was invited by the Venezuelan government to participate in evaluating educational programs to promote learning, and was later asked to develop a program to overcome the difficulties uncovered. Due to her research in this area, she was chosen as the incumbent of Bar-Ilan University's Machado Chair for Research on Cognitive Modifiability and the Development of Intelligence. The Chair was named in honor of Dr. Luis Alberto Machado, Minister for the Development of Intelligence of Venezuela, who was tasked with raising the intelligence level of the entire population of his country, from birth to old age.

The State of Israel recognized Prof. Klein a number of times for her singular contributions to her field. In awarding her the Israel Prize in 2011, the Prize Committee hailed Prof. Klein as one of the world's most prominent researchers in the field of early childhood education research. In 2008 she was chosen by the government's Ministerial Committee on Symbols and Ceremonies as one of 12 torch lighters at the opening ceremony for Israel's 60th anniversary celebrations. She was the only academician to represent the State of Israel at this historic event. For the country's 40th anniversary, she was honored at the Knesset as the most distinguished woman in Israeli education. In 2005 she was chosen by the Israel Academy of Sciences to head an academic committee which formulated the scientific-research basis for approaches to, and educational programs in, early childhood education. She was awarded the Outstanding Woman in Education Prize from the Council of Women's Organizations in Israel in 1989 for her theoretical and applied research.

Prof. Klein published numerous books, research programs and hundreds of articles in professional and medical journals. She served as an advisor to nearly two hundred graduate students. Today many of her former students may be found in key education positions in Israel. Her extensive research is used as the basis for advancing many disciplines in Israeli society.

In the past Prof. Klein said, "My dream is to see all the infants and toddlers in Israel receive the complete 'mental diet' they require, that they integrate into frameworks which are suited for them, and that they grow up to realize their full potential -- for their own good and for the benefit of the society in which they live." It is because of Prof. Klein's immeasurable contributions that so many of them have.

Prof. Klein was laid to rest Friday at the Segula Cemetery in Petach Tikva. She is survived by her husband, three children and many grandchildren.