Author: Susan Sutherland Fairhurst Isaacs
Alternate names: Susan Isaacs; Susan Sutherland (Fairhurst) Isaacs; Isaacs, Mrs. Susan Sutherland Fairhurst
Born: 24 May 1885
Died: 12 October 1948
Bio: Susan Sutherland Isaacs, CBE (née Fairhurst; also known as Ursula Wise) was a Lancashire-born educational psychologist and psychoanalyst. She published studies on the intellectual and social development of children and promoted the nursery school movement. For Isaacs, the best way for children to learn was by developing their independence. She believed that the most effective way to achieve this was through play, and that the role of adults and early educators was to guide children's play.

Between 1924 and 1927, she was the head of Malting House School in Cambridge, which is an experimental school founded by Geoffrey Pyke. The school fostered the individual development of children. In 1933, she became the first Head of the Child Development Department at the Institute of Education, University of London, where she established an advanced course in child development for teachers of young children.

Between 1929 and 1940, she was an 'agony aunt' under the pseudonym of Ursula Wise, replying to readers' problems in several child care journals, notably The Nursery World and Home and School.

Source: Wikipedia