Sheila's Obituary in The Guardian - 27.2.06

Professor Sheila Wolfendale, who has died aged 66 of pneumonia following treatment for cancer, was unique among educational psychologists. She had the ability to influence policymakers based on knowledge of the real issues in children's education and the importance of the involvement of parents in this process. Her inimitable style, fearless humour and unsurpassable integrity afforded her a status that few achieve.

Sheila's research work focused on early identification of learning difficulties, parental participation in children's educational development and family involvement in literacy. Publications such as Parental Participation in Children's Development in Education (1983) and The Parental Contribution to Statutory Assessment (1988) were seminal, changing attitudes to parents' rights and responsibilities, helping to stimulate such innovations as the Parent Partnership initiatives throughout the UK.

Sheila was an adviser to the Department for Education, for example, on the Special Educational Needs (Sen) code of practice (1993-94) and on Involving Parents in Assessment (2003-04), which included contributing to subsequent national conferences. She was also an Ofsted inspector (1993) and, in 1998, a psychology subject reviewer for the Higher Education Funding Council for England/Quality Assurance Agency. Recently, in collaboration with her husband Trevor Bryans, she was evaluator of the Who Cares? Trust literacy project for children in public care in Kent, as well as mapping parent partnership provision in Wales, on behalf of the regional government and the National Association for Special Educational Needs.

Her prolific authorship was matched by worldwide presentations at conferences and seminars. She set up or evaluated projects in parental partnership and family literacy in Canada, Germany, Hong Kong, Gibraltar, Greece, Malta, Romania and Poland. In 1990, co-sponsored by the British Council and the Australian Reading Association, she gave presentations across Australia as part of International Literacy Year.

She had a longstanding involvement in education in the London borough of Newham. She was coorganiser of the local Portage scheme, a home teaching programme for pre-school children with special educational needs, a founding member of the Newham Parents' Centre and a governor of a local inclusive primary school. Her innovative and challenging approach to professional training, applied research and professional development will be remembered by a generation of educational psychologists.

Sheila was born in Watford, Hertfordshire, the daughter of a chief chemist for Texaco. Her first degree, in psychology, was from Hull University, and she later trained in child development, undertaking an MSc at the London University Institute of Education. She was awarded her PhD from Hull in 1995.

After starting as a primary schoolteacher, she worked as a lecturer in higher education before becoming an educational psychologist. In 1981, she was appointed course director of the educational psychology training course at what is now the University of East London, a post she held for 18 years. In 1996, she was among those who developed the first professional doctorate programme for educational psychologists in the UK. She was awarded her chair in 1988 and was elected a fellow of the British Psychological Society in 1989. She is survived by Trevor, her daughter Rachel and son Daniel.

· Sheila Wolfendale, educational psychologist, born November 25 1939; died January 31 2006