My father, Philip Adey, who has died aged 73, was a chemistry teacher turned educationist and author. He devoted the vast majority of his working life to researching and promoting the teaching of thinking skills at college. His work on science teaching methods produced significant gains at GCSE, not just in science but in addition in maths and English. The strategy was further developed for primary education.
Philip was born in Sevenoaks, Kent. After attending Bryanston school, Dorset, he gained a BSc in chemistry and a PGCE and educational Diploma in Education from the London Institute of Education. Appointed head of chemistry on the Lodge school in Barbados in 1963, he left in 1970 to become a expert at the Caribbean Integrated Science Project based on the University of the West Indies.
Returning to the united kingdom in 1974 to finish his PhD at Chelsea College of Science and Technology, he then worked for the British Council in London and Jakarta, Indonesia, from 1979 to 1984. He went directly to be a researcher, lecturer, senior lecturer, reader and professor at King’s College London. After retiring in 2004, he continued working in Brunei, China, Hong Kong, Hungary and Poland. He was recently the education commissioner for Westminster city council.
Throughout his period at Chelsea and King’s, Philip pursued a research and development programme concerning the assessment and enhancement of college students’ intellectual ability. This ended in a chain of publications on cognitive acceleration and professional development programmes for teachers. His work with Michael Shayer and Carolyn Yates was highly influential. With Shayer, he wrote two bestselling books, Towards a Science of Science Teaching (1981) and actually Raising Standards: Cognitive Intervention and academic Achievement (1994).
Thinking Science, the curriculum materials of the Cognitive Acceleration through Science Education (Case) project, written with Shayer and Yates, can still be present in schools within the UK and beyond. His later work on Case in primary schools involved lots of colleagues within the UK, america and Australia.
Philip was tireless and intellectually rigorous, and engaged all on equal terms. His warmth and wit could remove darkness from a room. He was a great speaker and thousands of teachers was inspired during his professional development sessions. His commitment to high-quality science education for all was evident throughout his career. He delighted in challenging the various orthodoxies held dear by politicians and policymakers, and debunking myths in education. His last book, Bad Education, was published last November.
Philip is survived by his second wife, Jadwiga, whom he married in 2006; by his sons, Lewis and myself, from his first marriage, to Jennifer, who died in 2003; by Jadwiga’s daughters, Lucy and Sophie; and by his grandchildren, Ayesha, Kamilah, Saffron and Leo.
