Article

Donalda James Dickie

Published Online December 17, 2007

Last Edited December 16, 2013

Donalda James Dickie, educator, author (b at Hespeler, Ont 5 Oct 1883; d at Haney, BC 1972). Educated at Queen's, Columbia, Oxford and Toronto, Dickie was influential in Alberta education as a NORMAL SCHOOL instructor, curriculum reviser and textbook author.

Dickie, Donalda James

Donalda James Dickie, educator, author (b at Hespeler, Ont 5 Oct 1883; d at Haney, BC 1972). Educated at Queen's, Columbia, Oxford and Toronto, Dickie was influential in Alberta education as a NORMAL SCHOOL instructor, curriculum reviser and textbook author. She advocated the "Enterprise," a progressive educational approach to teaching the elementary school curriculum. By offering courses at the normal schools, writing a reference book, The Enterprise in Theory and Practice (1940), and publishing a variety of textbooks that incorporated progressive philosophy, she passed her ideas on to the next generation of teachers and children. Besides textbooks in composition, reading, geography and history, she also wrote many children's stories, receiving the Governor General's Award for juvenile literature in 1950.