Barbara Tizard, who has died aged 88, was an eminent developmental psychologist. Her exhaustive research was driven by important theoretical questions, but also by her strong determination to make life as good as possible for children.
One set of studies, published as Early Childhood Education (1975), Adoption: A Second Chance (1977) and Involving Parents in Nursery and Infant Schools (1983), looked at the long-term effects of growing up in institutions and the influence of different types of care – residential, nurseries, playgroups, infant schools and the home – on future development. In another, Young Children Learning (1984), she found that children expressed more curiosity at home than at nursery school and that the language used by working-class families in the home was often richer than that used in a nursery school setting. This drew hostility from practitioners because it challenged received wisdoms about the benefits of nursery education to children from less privileged backgrounds.
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