Tribute to Maureen Pope

As a tribute to our mentor, colleague, and friend of almost 30 years, Professor Emerita Maureen Pope, we draw on memories, interviews, and writings from our shared research communities of ISATT and PCP (Personal Construct Psychology), hoping to give voice to Maureen's vivid spirit and outstanding scholarship and academic career spanning over almost five decades.

Maureen grew up and went to school in Northern Ireland, where she early showed independence and inclination to go her own way. In her book (co-authored with Pam Denicolo) Transformative Education: Personal Construct Approaches to Practice and Research (2001), Maureen recalls being one of the few at her all-girl college taking science A-levels and was therefore bussed to the nearest coeducational school to have physics lessons, something she found “a liberating experience.” At university, Maureen continued with pure science but changed to psychology after being told “Just learn it, you do not need to know why” when asking the essential learning question “but why?”. For us, this anecdote says much about Maureen's curiosity and eagerness to understand beyond rote learning and to get to the core of matters. Maureen intuitively noted that for learning (construing) to take place, the learner's views are to be articulated and elaborated on, not dismissed. This constructivist stance seems embedded in Maureen.