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The standard of the health of the children has been well maintained
and no outbreak of infection has occurred.
Student probationers have continued their theoretical training
at the Technical College as reported in previous years, and have
taken the certificate of the National Society of Children's Nurseries
on completion of the course.
Parents meetings have become a regular feature in the nursery
service and have been well supported during the year.
RESEARCH UNDERTAKEN IN TOTTENHAM
NURSERIES.
In summer, 1941, an investigation was started at the Municipal
Day Nursery, Park Lane, by Miss Adler (now Mrs. Loewenheim,
M.A., Ph.D.), into the development of intelligent behaviour of
children between one and two years of age. The research was
carried out for the purpose of a Ph.D. thesis and was approved by
the University of London in March, 1945.
The purpose of this research was to trace the early beginnings
of intelligent behaviour. The second year of life seemed to be
an especially promising period in the child's life as within this
period the child leaves conspicuously behind him babyhood, an
advance marked by the acquisition of upright walking and of language.
Furthermore, very little psychological research has been done about
the first and second years of human life as compared with later
years. The main reason for this seems to lay in the circumstance
that the approach to the child's mental experiences is extremely
difficult at an age where the child cannot put them adequately into
language. Moreover, the child of these ages complies much less
readily to a "test situation", and finally, there is a great technical
difficulty to find a sufficiently great number of "subjects". Most
research into the first two years of life has, indeed, been undertaken
on one single child, of one very small group only.
In addition to the work undertaken in the Borough of Tottenham,
the research was extended to samples in twelve other boroughs, so
that the final experiment was based on the representative number
of 120 infants.
The method of experiment was especially adapted to the mental
level of the age-group tested, in that the tests were chosen which