Marie Clay
Dame Marie Clay | |
---|---|
Born | Marie Mildred Irwin 3 January 1926 Wellington, New Zealand |
Died | 13 April 2007 Auckland, New Zealand | (aged 81)
Occupation(s) | Educationist, researcher |
Dame Marie Mildred Clay DBE FRSNZ (/ˈmɑːri/;[1] née Irwin; 3 January 1926 – 13 April 2007) was a researcher from New Zealand known for her work in educational literacy. She was committed to the idea that children who struggle to learn to read and write can be helped with early intervention. A clinical psychologist, she developed the Reading Recovery intervention programme in New Zealand and expanded it worldwide.
Early life and education
Marie Mildred Irwin was born in Wellington, New Zealand, the daughter of accountant Donald Leolin Irwin and music teacher Mildred Blanche Godlier. Her parents separated when she was five. She attended four primary schools, then Wellington East Girls’ College.[2] She studied education at Victoria University College, graduating BA in 1947 and MA with second-class honours in 1949.[3] Her masters thesis was entitled The teaching of reading in New Zealand special classes.[4] She also received a Diploma of Education from the same institution in 1948.[3] After studying clinical child psychology at the University of Minnesota as a Fulbright scholar, Clay received her PhD from the University of Auckland in 1966, after completing her doctoral thesis entitled Emergent reading behaviour.[2][5] She was employed on the faculty of the University of Auckland from 1960.[2]
Career
Clay developed the Reading Recovery a whole language intervention program, which was adopted by all New Zealand schools in 1983. In 1985, teachers and researchers from Ohio State University brought Reading Recovery to the United States. Reading Recovery is an early intervention for at-risk students in grade one that is designed to close gaps within an average of 12–20 weeks.[citation needed]
In 1982, Clay was inducted into the International Reading Association's Reading Hall of Fame. In the 1987 New Year Honours, she was appointed a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire, for services to education.[6] In 1992, she was elected president of the International Reading Association and was the first non-North American to hold this position.[7][8]
Her teachers' guidebook, Reading Recovery: Guidelines for Teachers in Training, has sold more than eight million copies worldwide. She died in Auckland, New Zealand at the age of 81 following a brief illness.[9]
Reading Recovery
Reading Recovery use in Australia and New Zealand has reduced significantly over the last years because of a report from the New South Wales Department of Education[10] concluded that Reading Recovery was largely ineffective, and should not be used for most children.[11]
On April 23, 2022, the Center for Research in Education and Social Policy at the University of Delaware presented the results of a study of the long-term effects of Reading Recovery. The conclusion was that the "long-term impact estimates were significant and negative". The study found that children who received Reading Recovery had scores on state reading tests in third and fourth grade that were below the test scores of similar children who did not receive Reading Recovery. It suggests three possible hypotheses for this outcome:
- While Reading Recovery produces large impacts on early literacy measures, it does not give students the required skills for success in later grades; or,
- The gains are lost because students do not receive sufficient intervention in later grades; or,
- The impacts of the early intervention was washed out by subsequent experiences.[12]
Recognition
Faculty at Ohio State worked with Clay in the early 1980s and she served as a distinguished visiting scholar there in 1984–85. The Ohio State University board of trustees approved the Marie Clay Endowed Chair in Reading Recovery and Early Literacy on 4 February 2005.[13] In 2017 Clay was selected as one of the Royal Society Te Apārangi's "150 women in 150 words", celebrating the contribution of women to knowledge in New Zealand.[14]
Personal life
In 1951, she married civil engineer Warwick Victor Clay, with whom she had a son, Alan, and a daughter, Jenny.[15] They were divorced in 1976.[16][2]
Selected bibliography
This section lacks ISBNs for the books listed. (April 2014) |
- Reading: The patterning of complex behaviour. Auckland, New Zealand: Heinemann. (Other editions 1979, 1985)
- Quadruplets and Higher Multiple Births (Mac Keith Press, 1989)
- Becoming Literate: The Construction of Inner Control (Heinemann, 1991)
- Concepts About Print: What Have Children Learned About the Way We Print Language? (Heinemann, 2000)
- Change Over Time in Children's Literacy Development (Heinemann, 2001)
- By different paths to common outcomes. York, ME: Stenhouse, 1998.
- Reading Recovery: A guidebook for teachers in training. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann, 1993.
- Literacy lessons designed for individuals part one: Why? When? And How? Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann, 2005.
- Literacy lessons designed for individuals part two: Teaching procedures. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann, 2005.
References
- ^ Fox, Margalit (20 April 2007). "Marie M. Clay, Remedial Reading Specialist, Dies at 81". The New York Times.
- ^ a b c d May, Helen (2018). "Clay, Marie Mildred". Te Ara - the Encyclopedia of New Zealand. Retrieved 19 March 2020.
- ^ a b "NZ university graduates 1870–1961: I–K". Shadows of Time. Retrieved 12 February 2019.
- ^ Irwin, Marie Mildred (1 January 1948), The teaching of reading in New Zealand special classes, Open Access Repository Victoria University of Wellington, doi:10.26686/WGTN.17061380, Wikidata Q111991172
- ^ Clay, Marie M (1966), Emergent reading behaviour, ResearchSpace@Auckland, hdl:2292/778, Wikidata Q111963787
- ^ "No. 50766". The London Gazette (3rd supplement). 31 December 1986. p. 33.
- ^ "Past Presidents | International Literacy Association". www.literacyworldwide.org. Retrieved 28 April 2021.
- ^ Gaffney, Janet S.; Askew, Billie (1999). "Marie Clay: Researcher, author, and champion of young readers". Reading Recovery Council of North America. Retrieved 28 April 2021.
{{cite web}}
: CS1 maint: url-status (link) - ^ Fox, Margalit (20 April 2007). "Marie M. Clay, Remedial Reading Specialist, Dies at 81". The New York Times. Retrieved 27 September 2008.
- ^ Bradford, Deborah; Wan, Wai-Yin (2015). Reading Recovery: A Sector-Wide Analysis (Report). Centre for Education Statistics and Evaluation, Department of Education, New South Wales, Australia.
- ^ Smith, Alexandra (20 December 2015). "Reading Recovery program used in 960 NSW public schools does not work". The Sydney Morning Herald. Retrieved 19 April 2018.
- ^ READING RECOVERY-Long-Term Effects and Cost-Effectiveness (Report). Center for Research in Education and Social Policy at the University of Delaware. 23 April 2022.
- ^ "Marie Clay Chair to Aid Literacy Research". readingrecovery.osu.edu. Retrieved 28 April 2021.
{{cite web}}
: CS1 maint: url-status (link) - ^ "Marie Clay". Royal Society Te Apārangi. Retrieved 28 April 2021.
- ^ The International Who's Who of Women, ed. Elizabeth Sleeman, Europa Publications, 2002, p. 107
- ^ Fox, Margalit (20 April 2007). "Marie M. Clay, Remedial Reading Specialist, Dies at 81". The New York Times.
- Use dmy dates from June 2013
- 1926 births
- 2007 deaths
- New Zealand Dames Commander of the Order of the British Empire
- New Zealand educational theorists
- Ohio State University faculty
- Reading skill advocates
- University of Auckland alumni
- University of Auckland faculty
- People from Wellington City
- Victoria University of Wellington alumni
- Presidents of the International Literacy Association