Helen May

Helen May (sometimes Helen May Cook) ONZM (born 25 February 1947) is a New Zealand education pioneer. She is currently an Emeritus professor at the University of Otago.
Academic career.
May trained as a primary school teacher in the mid-1960s and in her early career taught 5- to 6-year-olds. Later, when she had her own children, she worked in childcare and for five years was the coordinator of the Victoria University crèche.
While running the Victoria University of Wellington crèche, she completed a MA in education, " 'The politics of childcare : analysis of growth and constraint' " and the a PhD " 'Postwar Women 1945-1960 and Their Daughters 1970-1985: an Analysis of Continuity, Contradiction, and Change in Two Generations of Pakeha Women as Mothers, Wives, and Workers.' "
In 1987 she began work in teacher education at Hamilton Teachers' College, and later at the University of Waikato. During the early 1990s she worked with Margaret Carr on the development of Te Whāriki, the first national curriculum guidelines for early childhood education in New Zealand. She was appointed to the first New Zealand professorial Chair in Early Childhood Education at Victoria University of Wellington in 1995, and in 2005 she was appointed as Professor of Education and Head of Faculty of Education at the University of Otago. From 2007-2011 May was the Dean of the University of Otago College of Education. On retirement in 2016 she became an Emeritus professor. She is currently based in Wellington.
She is still actively involved in PBRF (Performance Based Research Fund).