Minnie Abercrombie (14 November 1909 – 25 November 1984), also known as M. L. J. Abercrombie, was a British zoologist, educationalist and psychologist. She was known for her work on invertebrates and her work in the publishing industry, conducted with her husband,

Michael Abercrombie Michael Abercrombie FRS (14 August 1912 – 28 May 1979) was a British cell biologist and embryologist. He was one of four children of the poet Lascelles Abercrombie. Early life Michael was born at Ryton near Dymock in Gloucestershire on 14 A ...

. She also contributed to the theory and practice of education through her teaching, research, lecturing and writing. In particular, she carried out pioneer psychological research into the use of groups in learning with medical, architectural and education students, and she shared with diverse audiences in many countries her extensive knowledge and expertise as a teacher who used the methods and principles of group analytic psychotherapy.

Early life and education

Minnie Louie Johnson was born on 14 November 1909. She attended Waverley Road Secondary School in

Birmingham Birmingham ( ) is a City status in the United Kingdom, city and metropolitan borough in the metropolitan county of West Midlands (county), West Midlands in England. It is the second-largest city in the United Kingdom with a population of 1. ...

, where she completed the higher school certificate in chemistry,

zoology Zoology ()The pronunciation of zoology as is usually regarded as nonstandard, though it is not uncommon. is the branch of biology that studies the animal kingdom, including the structure, embryology, evolution, classification, habits, and ...

botany Botany, also called , plant biology or phytology, is the science of plant life and a branch of biology. A botanist, plant scientist or phytologist is a scientist who specialises in this field. The term "botany" comes from the Ancient Greek w ...

, and

history History (derived ) is the systematic study and the documentation of the human activity. The time period of event before the invention of writing systems is considered prehistory. "History" is an umbrella term comprising past events as well ...

. Influenced by her biology teacher she stayed in education and went to university. She was awarded her

B.Sc. A Bachelor of Science (BS, BSc, SB, or ScB; from the Latin ') is a bachelor's degree awarded for programs that generally last three to five years. The first university to admit a student to the degree of Bachelor of Science was the University of ...

(Zoology, First Class) and

Ph.D A Doctor of Philosophy (PhD, Ph.D., or DPhil; Latin: or ') is the most common degree at the highest academic level awarded following a course of study. PhDs are awarded for programs across the whole breadth of academic fields. Because it is ...

from the

University of Birmingham The University of Birmingham (informally Birmingham University) is a Public university, public research university located in Edgbaston, Birmingham, United Kingdom. It received its royal charter in 1900 as a successor to Queen's College, Birmingha ...

in 1930 and 1932, respectively, for studying respiration control in

invertebrate Invertebrates are a paraphyletic group of animals that neither possess nor develop a vertebral column (commonly known as a ''backbone'' or ''spine''), derived from the notochord. This is a grouping including all animals apart from the chordate ...

Career

In 1932, she was appointed as a lecturer in the Zoology Department at University of Birmingham, and during World War II was promoted to acting head. She married

17 July 1939 and collaborated with him extensively on both scientific and outreach work. In 1947 she moved with her husband to

University College, London , mottoeng = Let all come who by merit deserve the most reward , established = , type = Public research university , endowment = £143 million (2020) , budget = � ...

. Among her work to popularise science was the '' New Biology'' journal aimed at young people published by

Penguin Books Penguin Books is a British publishing house. It was co-founded in 1935 by Allen Lane with his brothers Richard and John, as a line of the publishers The Bodley Head, only becoming a separate company the following year. She also collaborated with Michael Abercrombie and C. J. Hickman on the Penguin ''Dictionary of Biology''. She worked on the selection and pre-clinical training of medical students, based in the Anatomy Department. This prompted her interest in group discussion, perception and reasoning so students learned from their peers as well as teachers, a precursor to

problem-based learning Problem-based learning (PBL) is a student-centered pedagogy in which students learn about a subject through the experience of solving an open-ended problem found in trigger material. The PBL process does not focus on problem solving with a defi ...

later adopted in medical education. She also spent 5 years working at

Guy's Hospital Guy's Hospital is an NHS hospital in the borough of Southwark in central London. It is part of Guy's and St Thomas' NHS Foundation Trust and one of the institutions that comprise the King's Health Partners, an academic health science centre. ...

on a project about cerebral palsy. Abercrombie then was appointed as Reader in Architectural Education at the Bartlett School in University College and able to take full control of her research and teaching. After her formal retirement, she continued to work and research on small-group education, first with a grant-funded research project about medical education in the Radiology Department at

Addenbrooke's Hospital Addenbrooke's Hospital is an internationally renowned large teaching hospital and research centre in Cambridge, England, with strong affiliations to the University of Cambridge. Addenbrooke's Hospital is based on the Cambridge Biomedical Camp ...

in Cambridge where she was then living, followed by a project at the Cambridge Institute of Education with a group of primary school headteachers and Cambridge Group Work, a regional branch of the

Institute of Group Analysis The Institute of Group Analysis is a training organisation for group psychotherapists in the analytical tradition, based on the groundwork begun by S. H. Foulkes in forming the body of theory and practice now known as Group Analysis. History and ...

based in London. She was also involved with the

University of the Third Age The University of the Third Age (U3A) is an international movement whose aims are the education and stimulation of mainly retired members of the community—those in their third 'age' of life. There is no universally accepted model for the U3A. I ...

. As a consequence, she was considered an authority on medical education and continuing education of school teachers. She published several books. She was among the founders of the

Group Analytic Society The Group Analytic Society International was founded in London in 1952 by S. H. Foulkes, Minnie (Jane) Abercrombie and Norbert Elias as a learned society to study and promote the development of Group Analysis in both its clinical and applied aspec ...

and its president from 1980 - 1983. Abercrombie was a Visiting Professor at universities in Australia and at

McMaster University McMaster University (McMaster or Mac) is a public research university in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada. The main McMaster campus is on of land near the residential neighbourhoods of Ainslie Wood and Westdale, adjacent to the Royal Botanical Ga ...

, Ontario in Canada because of her expertise with small groups.

Research into education methods

AbercrombieAbercrombie, M.L. (1960) The Anatomy of Judgement: An Investigation into the Processes of Perception and Reasoning, London: Hutchinson.Abercrombie, M. L. (1970) ''Aims and Techniques of Group Teaching'', Society for Research into Higher Education (SRHE working party on teaching methods, Publication 2), University of Surrey, Guildford. investigated and developed improved methods of small-group teaching in higher education. Examples were why medical students, who were able to solve problems when presented in a familiar format, were unable to do so when the same problems were presented in a slightly different way. She brought out that most people rarely reflect upon their initial judgements, which were embedded in their own personality. Abercrombie found that group discussion helped these students solve such problems and, in particular, improved the ability of the students to discriminate between facts and opinions, to resist false conclusions and to bring fresh strategies to their attempts to solve new problems without being adversely influenced by past failure. The ideas she put forward about the development of small group interactive learning pedagogies in the 1960s in the UK had an almost immediate impact on the primary and tertiary education. Her ''Anatomy of Judgement: an investigation into the process of perception and reasoning'' resulted from ten years of research on the selection and training of medical students at

University College London , mottoeng = Let all come who by merit deserve the most reward , established = , type = Public research university , endowment = £143 million (2020) , budget = ...

. This research suggested that the art of medical judgement, diagnosis and other key elements of medical practice, were better learned in small groups of students arriving at a diagnosis collaboratively than by students working individually. Her finding was that group discussion, properly directed, could do much to eliminate faults in the teacher and to make the student think instead of learning. Concepts of

used in many medical schools in the late twentieth and twenty-first centuries are based on these ideas. There was a clear line of development in her work that was always underpinned by her interest in educational work. She progressively developed her research and thinking from her early years as a zoology teacher through her growing involvement in

Group Analysis Group analysis (or group analytic psychotherapy) is a method of group psychotherapy originated by S. H. Foulkes in the 1940s. Group psychotherapy was pioneered by S. H. Foulkes with his psychoanalytic patients and later with soldiers in the North ...

and its application in education. Throughout her work, three themes – the selective and projective nature of perception and reasoning; the difficulty that human beings experience in changing; the subtlety and complexity of communication – continually interact with and enrich one another. She increasingly concentrated on group analysis and its relevance to and use in higher education involving "free" or "associative" group discussion as she used it in her own work with students. The book ''The Anatomy of Judgement'' is an edited selection from her educational writings and is her best known book. It is essentially an analysis of the process of learning as a summation of judgements when information is presented, showing how emotion and preconceptions influence this judgement. The extracts are arranged in four parts. The first gives an overview of the development of her research and thinking from her early years as a zoology teacher to her growing involvement in group analysis and its application in education. The second part illustrates the way in which, throughout her work, three themes interact: the selective and projective nature of perception and reasoning; the difficulty that human beings experience in changing; the subtlety and complexity of communication. The third part focuses in greater detail upon group analysis, its relevance to and use in higher education.

Group learning

She carried out pioneer research into the use of groups in learning with medical, architectural and education students, and she shared with diverse audiences in many countries her extensive knowledge and expertise as a teacher who used the methods and principles of group analytic psychotherapy. Abercrombie came to these views through her contact with the psychoanalyst and group analyst S. H. Foulkes and in 1952 she was a founder member of the

, and president of the society in 1981. This society still awards a prize in her name, the Jane Abercrombie Prize, in recognition of the importance of her ideas.

Later life

When her husband got a job at University of Cambridge, she moved with him to live in Cambridge but commuted to continue to work in London. They had one son, Nicholas. She died suddenly on 25 November 1984.

Selected publications

* Johnson, ML and RJ Whitney (1939
Colorimetric method for estimation of dissolved oxygen in the field.
''J. Experimental Biology'' 16 (1) 56 - 59. * Johnson, ML (1942
The respiratory function of the haemoglobin of the earthworm
''J. Experimental Biology'' 18 (3) 266 - 277. * Abercrombie, M. L. (1960) ''The Anatomy of Judgement: An Investigation into the Processes of Perception and Reasoning'', London: Hutchinson. Reprinted 1989,

Free Association Books Free Association Books is a project started in London in the 1980s. Bob Young and colleagues began a search using psychoanalysis to understand the problems of liberation. Other people became involved in the movement such as Andrew Samuels and B ...

. * Abercrombie, M. L. (1970) ''Aims and Techniques of Group Teaching'', Society for Research into Higher Education (SRHE working party on teaching methods, Publication 2), University of Surrey, Guildford. * Abercrombie, M. L. (1979). ''Uses and Abuses of Boundaries – Perception: The Structure of Space and the Group Process''. ''Group Analysis'', 12(1), 30. * Abercrombie, M. L. J. (1981) ''Beyond d Hawkins, D. Hawkins and M.L.J. Abercrombie (1982) ''Roads to Radiology: An Imaging Guide to Medicine and Surgery''. Berlin Heidelberg; Springer-Verlag. 146ppthe Unconscious: Group Analysis Applied'' (5th Foulkes Lecture). ''Group Analysis'', 14(2), suppt.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Abercrombie, Minnie Women zoologists 1909 births 1984 deaths Alumni of the University of Birmingham 20th-century British zoologists 20th-century British women scientists Group psychotherapists British educational theorists 20th-century British psychologists