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Lawton, Joseph (1935 - )
Joseph Lawton, a Child and Family Studies professor at UW for twenty-three years, grew up in England, where he earned his four diplomas and degrees--three in education from the London School of Education (1957), Leicester University (1964) and Manchester University (1969), and a PhD from Leeds University (1974). Before coming to UW, Lawton held numerous teaching positions, including a six-year position as senior lecturer in Early Education at Leeds. In 1973, a chance meeting with Frank Hooper during Lawton's first visit to the United States led to an interview and his appointment to the Child and Family Studies program area beginning the following year. Lawton taught numerous courses in the areas of early childhood education and child development. He also played an important role in the creation of the early childhood preschool / kindergarten education major, for which he developed the course "Intellectual Development in Early Childhood and its Relationship to the Practice of Preschool Education." The two textbooks that he authored, Introduction to Child Development (1982) and Introduction to Child Care and Early Childhood Education (1988), allowed him to share his teaching with students around the country. Only two weeks after beginning his tenure at UW, Lawton became the director of the UW Pre-School Laboratory, a position he held for twelve years. As director, he improved and expanded the preschool laboratory while integrating it into an active program of research. One of Lawton's early research projects involved comparing children enrolled in two preschool program models, the Piagetian model of guided discovery and the Ausubelian model of teacher direction and guided discovery. This research established his reputation as a national expert in the evaluation of preschool education models, and his contribution to the study of the Ausubelian approach to learning was recognized by a Palmer O. Johnson Award for Outstanding Research by the American Educational Research Association in 1981. Lawton continued on to conduct research on how long the effects of Head Start programs on children lasted once they moved on to kindergarten. Lawton also served for nine years at Chair of the Child and Family Studies program area during years of important change such as the development and approval of a doctoral degree program. |
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