Valerie Constance Yule OAM (2 January 1929 – 28 January 2021)^[1] was an Australian researcher in literacy and imagination, and a clinical child psychologist,^[2] academic, school psychologist and teacher, working in disadvantaged schools, Melbourne and Monash Universities in psychology and education; the Royal Children's Hospital, Melbourne and the Royal Aberdeen Children's Hospital; and hon. research fellow (Psychology) at Aberdeen University.

Yule died on 28 January 2021. She was posthumously awarded the Medal of the Order of Australia at the 2021 Queen's Birthday Honours.^[3]

Education

She attended Methodist Ladies' College, Melbourne (East 1945). She obtained BA (Hons), History and English, MA Psychology, Dip Ed, and PhD Education - research thesis on Orthography and Reading, Spelling and Society.

Memberships

Fellow of the Galton Institute^[4] (UK); Member, British Psychological Society; Vice-President, Simplified Spelling Society^[5] (UK); Member, Independent Scholars Association of Australia,^[6] and of Australian educational and social reforming organizations. Founder, the non-profit Australian Centre for Social Innovations,^[7] 1991; member, the British Institute for Social Inventions,^[8] 1984.

Original work

• Research to make literacy easier by removing the barriers. This includes the concept of online access to understanding and self-help, and improving English spelling by maximising its advantages as well as reducing its disadvantages to meet needs and abilities of users and learners. This cognitive psychological research approach goes beyond the conventional assumptions of a purely phonetic solution to spelling reform as defined in Wikipedia.
• Studies of children's imagination and applied imagination.
• Social innovations; alternatives for social problems; more natural childcare; preventing waste of intelligence; the cognitive effects of very loud music, now pervasive and global; non-destructive pleasures; economic and political alternatives for sustainability without requiring continual growth; humane solutions to population growth;^[9] cutting production of waste to reduce carbon emissions; the psychology of peace.^[10]

Published work

• What Happens to Children: The Origins of violence. A Collection of stories told by disadvantaged children who could not write them. Sydney: Angus & Robertson 1979 ^[11]
• Psychology For Teenagers - Making the Most of Who You Are
• What's Primary School for, anyway? Melbourne: Primary Education, 1981
• The Encyclopaedia of Social Inventions. Ed. Valerie Yule & Nicholas Albery. Institute of Social Inventions. London. 1989.
• The Book of Spells & Misspells. Sussex, UK: The Book Guild. 2005
• L. Ivanov and V. Yule. Roman Phonetic Alphabet for English. Contrastive Linguistics. XXXII, 2007, 2. pp. 50–64