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Elizabeth A.Sackler Center for Feminist Art

Sylvia Ashton-Warner

b. 1908, Stratford, New Zealand; d. 1984, Tauranga, New Zealand

Sylvia Ashton-Warner, a novelist, educator, theorist, painter, and memoirist, lived and worked in New Zealand. Through her literacy work with Maori children, Ashton-Warner developed an innovative teaching method based on the emotional responses of the individual learner. This technique proved successful in the education of children of color and minority cultures who had faced considerable obstacles learning from the traditional curriculum developed for white middle-class children. Ashton-Warner’s most influential book, Teacher, was published in 1963.