Traveling spark : Alice Yardley and child-centered education : the development of her educational thought, 1913-2002

The British author and educator Alice Yardley (1913-2002) worked in Nottingham City Schools (UK) as a teacher and headteacher between 1934 and 1961, and was instrumental in the evolution of the English Infant School for five to seven year olds as a model of progressive theory and practice in action... Based on information gathered from interviews with Alice Yardley over a three year period (1999-2002) and incorporating a number of primary sources, including her memoir, notebooks, archival documents and records, visits to places where she lived and taught, and conversations with her colleagues and students, the dissertation draws on historical and interpretive biographical methods, and a feminist oral history structure, in which subject and researcher are active in the construction of the narrative. --Abstract