Constance Davey
Constance Muriel Davey (4 December 1882 – 4 December 1963) was an Australian psychologist who worked in the South Australian Department of Education, where she introduced the state's first special education classes. Biography Davey was born in 1882 in Nuriootpa, South Australia, to Emily Mary (née Roberts) and Stephen Henry Davey. She began teaching at a Port Adelaide private school in 1908 and at St Peter's Collegiate Girls' School in 1909. She attended the University of Adelaide as a part-time student, completing a B.A. in philosophy in 1915 and an M.A. in 1918. In 1921 she won a Catherine Helen Spence Memorial Scholarship which allowed her to undertake a doctorate at the University of London; her main area of research was "mental efficiency and deficiency" in children. She received her doctorate in 1924 and visited the United States and Canada to observe the teaching of intellectually disabled and delinquent children before returning to Australia. In November 1924 Davey was hired as the first psychologist in the South Australian Department of Education, where she was tasked with examining and organising classes for "backward, retarded and problem" school students. She examined and performed intelligence tests on all educationally delayed children, and established