Biography

Ann Leslie Brown (1943–1999) was an educational psychologist who developed methods for teaching children to be better learners. Her interest in the human memory brought Brown to focus on active memory strategies that would help enhance human memory and developmental differences in memory tasks. Her realization that children's learning difficulties often stem from an inability to use metacognitive strategies such as summarizing led to profound advances in educational psychology theory and teaching practices.Brown was born in an air raid shelter in Portsmouth, England, during World War II. She was dyslexic and did not learn to read until she was 13. Just before entering the University of London, she saw a documentary about how animals learn in their natural environments and decided to major in psychology. Brown received a PhD in psychology from the University of London for research on “Anxiety and Complex Learning Performance in Children.” She moved to the United States where she met her husband and collaborator Joseph Campione. Brown received several prestigious awards for her research and served as president of American Educational Research Association. She died at 56 on June 4, 1999 in San Francisco. She was survived by husband Joseph Campione, son Richard Campione, two brothers Peter and Michael Taylor, and granddaughter Sophia Campione.