Born: 1910, Australia
Died: 1985
Country most active: Australia
Also known as: NA
This biography is republished from The Encyclopedia of Women and Leadership in Twentieth-Century Australia. Written by Deborah Towns, Swinburne University. See below for full attribution.
Margaret Shaw Yule was born at Beeac, Victoria in 1910, the daughter of Alexander and Margaret Yule (nee Shaw). She graduated from the Kindergarten Teachers College, Melbourne in 1931 and in 1933 completed a Nursery School Diploma. For the next fourteen years she worked in Free Kindergarten Union (FKU) kindergartens in Victoria. From 1944 until 1953 she taught in a new type of kindergarten which was organised by a parent’s pre-school association in Heidelberg. After this experience her next challenge was teacher-in-charge of Marathon, the Spastic Society’s school where she provided pre-school education. She also studied a psychology course at the University of Melbourne and in 1960 she completed a Diploma of Child Development at the Institute of Education, London University. On her return she managed the in-service courses at the Melbourne Kindergarten Teachers Centre, which enabled primary and infant teachers to qualify as kindergarten teachers. Her courses influenced pre-school education in Victoria as many of her students went on to senior roles in education.
Yule was a leader in professional associations including a founding member of the Kindergarten Teachers Association of Victoria; an office bearer in the Kindergarten Directors’ Association and a member of the Editorial Committee of the Australian Pre-School Quarterly journal (1962-1974). After retirement in 1976 she volunteered as a visiting teacher at the Association of Crippled Children and Adults where she guided parents of handicapped babies and toddlers. She died in 1985.
Work cited
Deborah Towns, ‘Yule, Margaret’, in The Encyclopedia of Women and Leadership in Twentieth-Century Australia, Australian Women’s Archives Project, 2014, https://www.womenaustralia.info/leaders/biogs/WLE0473b.htm, accessed 16 January 2022.