Jane Beasley Raph

1917-2000

Jane Beasley Raph was well known among her peers for her work with Ollie Backus on a conversational group approach to working with children with language disorders. Her little book, co-authored with Backus (Backus & Beasley, 1951) was frequently cited and contrasted with more individualized drill-based therapies.

Beasley was born in 1917. She attended Bowling Green State University, obtaining her bachelors degree in 1940. From there she moved the University of Michigan and received her masters in 1945. Her doctoral degree, granted in 1955, was an Ed.D. from Columbia University's Teachers College.

Beasley married Theodore A. Raph in December 1957.

Beasley was a public school speech clinician in Grosse Point Michigan from 1936 to 44. She then moved to university clinics, serving as a clinical instructor at the University of Michigan from 1946 to 1948, a clinical instructor at Ohio University from 1949 to1950, an Assistant Professor at the University of Alabama from 1951to 1953, where she worked with Ollie Backus. During her doctoral program at Teachers College, Columbia University she served as a research associate.

She was appointed a professor in the Department of Psychological Foundations at Rutgers in 1957 and a research associate in the Department of Psychiatry at New York University's School of Medicine from 1963 to 1966. While at Rutgers, she collaaborated with Milton Schwebel, the dean of the Graduate School, on the creation of what was to become a popular book about how to apply the ideas of Jean Piaget to classroom practice.

In 1962 Jane Raph became a Fellow of the American Speech and Hearing Association.

Publications

Beasley, J. (1949). Techniques of therapy for preschool children. Journal of Speech and Hearing Disorders, 14, 307-311.

Beasley, J. (1951). Group therapy in the field of speech correction. Exceptional Children, 17, 102-107.

Beasley, J. (1951). Development of social skills as an instrument in speech therapy. Journal of Speech and Hearing Disorders, 16, 241-245.

Backus, O., & Beasley, J. (1951). Speech therapy with children. NY: Houghton Mifflin.

Beasley, J. (1956). Slow to talk. New York: Teachers College, Columbia University.

Beasley, J. (1960). Determinants of motivation in speech therapy, Journal of Speech and Hearing Disorders, 25, 13-17. (McClelland's theory).

Raph, J. B. (1960). The relationship of psychological development to linguistic behavior in the middle years of childhood. In D. Barbara (Ed.), Psychological and psychiatric aspects of speech and hearing (pp. 69-89). Springfield, IL: Charles C. Thomas, Publisher.

Raph, J. B. (1965). Language development in socially disadvantaged children. Review of Educational Research, 35, 389-400.

Raph, J. B. (1965). Development of a methodology for maintaining and analyzing spontaneous verbalizations used by pre-kindergarten children in selected head0start programs--a pilot study. Final project report to the Department of Education. ERIC EDO15008

Raph, J., Goldbert, M. & Passow, H. (1966) Bright Underachievers: Studies of scholastic underachievement among intellectually superior high school students. NY: Teachers College Press.

Raph, J. (1967). Language and speech deficits in culturally disadvantaged children: Implications for the speech clinician. Journal of Speech and Hearing Disorders, 32, 203-214.

Schwebel, M. & Raph, J. (eds.) (1973). Piaget in the classroom. NY: Basic Books.

Schwebel, M. & Raph, J. (1973). Before and beyond the three R's. In M. Schwebel & J. Raph (eds.) Piaget in the classroom (pp. 3-32). NY: Basic Books.

Schwebel, M. & Raph, J. (1973). The developing teacher. In M. Schwebel & J. Raph (eds.) Piaget in the classroom (pp. 278-292). NY: Basic Books.

Raph, J.B. (1980). Forward to basics. Review of Education, Pedagogy, and Cultural Studies, 6, 3, 281-286.