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Kerry Bethell
Kerry Bethell is a past senior lecturer in teacher education at Massey University, Palmerston North. During her 25-year tenure she held leadership positions in preservice teacher education programmes including programme leader for the B.Ed. Teaching Early Years and Graduate Diploma of Teaching ECE. In retirement Kerry continues to present and publish papers nationally and internationally, whilst also taking on a stronger research interest in local history. In 2017 Kerry became a life member of Ruahine Kindergarten Association.
Kerry is interested in researching and writing up the overlooked and lost stories of our past with a particular focus on the work of ordinary people and the everyday events that helped shape broader key moments in history. Kerry’s undergraduate degree – a B.A. with a major in History - aligned with her professional and now community based work help shape the disciplines of educational history, childhood and teachers’ work underpinning her research focus. Her PhD explored the transmission of kindergarten pedagogy and its organizational implementation in two geographical sites in colonial New Zealand. Kerry has published widely both nationally and internationally as well as contributed to online sites. Kerry’s current research interest focuses on the transnational travel of teachers. This includes an internationally supported study of the two-way travel of twenty teachers of young children between New Zealand and Britain to gain kindergarten qualifications and/or work (1885 to 1925).
PhD publication
Bethell, K. (2008) ‘Not [just] for a name that we plead: Fashioning the ideological origins of early kindergarten in Dunedin and Wellington, New Zealand, 1870-1913. A thesis submitted to the Victoria University of Wellington in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Education. Victoria University of Wellington, 2007
NZCER Press publications
Book: Growing a kindergarten movement in Aotearoa New Zealand: Its people, purposes,
and politics
Year published: 2017
ISBN: 978-0-947509-54-5
Edited by: Helen May and Kerry Bethell