Marie Bell CNZM (née Heron; 19 February 1922 – 3 November 2012) was a New Zealand educationalist, lecturer and teacher who had a career lasting almost three-quarters of a century.
Bell was a supervisor and teacher who introduced a child-led education philosophy to allow children to learn in their own development and interests into New Zealand schools.
[1][2] She was the oldest of three children,[2] to the Rongotai College teacher Albert John George Heron and his wife Olive Marcia Mackie.
[1] She had a happy childhood in her household and did not focus on competition and examinations at Wellington East Girls' College; both of her parents valued education,[1] and her father asked her to "be a good woman.
[2] Bell was offered a place on a teaching course the University of London,[4] and used a war pension to travel to the United Kingdom by ship in 1949.
[2] She studied as a post-graduate at the university's London Institute of Education and was taught by child development theorists John Bowlby, Anna Freud and Dorothy Gardner.
[1] Bell's diploma focused on life's beginning and realised the possible extensive harm to children by raising them in a strict and highly organised manner.
[4] She also worked at nursery schools to observe children who were aged five or under in the early stages of their development friendship wise,[5] and undertook a teacher training course.
[2] Bell was made supervisor of junior classes at Wellington's Mount Cook School,[2] and brought a child-led education philosophy to allow children to learn in their own development and interests.
[1] She prepared evidence for presentation for the Parents Centres to the Consultative Committee on Infant and Pre-School Health Services in 1959 and the Royal Commission on Education two years later.
[2] Bell enrolled at Victoria University of Wellington and graduated with a Doctor of Philosophy on a dissertation on the oral history concerning the early pioneers of the Parents' Centre in 2004.