Fifty years ago, I trained as a nursery teacher at the Froebel Institute. The principal, Molly Brearley, later became an influential member of the Plowden Committee. She and her staff showed us that teaching is much more than instruction; their commitment to learner-centred education informed their lives. They influenced students through character as much as words, and we were imbued with deep and lasting principles, now embodied in the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child.
Our learning then was grounded in observation and reflection, applied as much to ourselves as to the children and families we worked with. We began to understand the interrelated nature of learning and the importance of play in all its complexity, and were always encouraged to link theory and practice.
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