Chris Athey, who died peacefully on 27 November at the age of 86, had a radical influence on our thinking about young children's learning. Her influence stems from the research she carried out through the Froebel Nursery Research Project, a project that ran from 1973 to 1978 and was documented in her groundbreaking book Extending Thought in Young Children, published in 1990 (see box).
Despite the rigour of her work, Chris was never drawn into traditional academic circles. She was born in South Shields and after leaving school at 13, she worked on her aunt's farm in Devon. She did a variety of jobs until the war, when she worked for four years as an engineer in Croydon.
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