Robert Wood (psychologist)

Robert Wood is a psychologist and writer. He was born 10 March 1941 in Gosforth, Newcastle upon Tyne, of an English father and a Welsh mother. With both parents hailing from Sunderland he moved there more or less as soon as his father was back from the war. In the north of the town, now a city, he attended Fulwell Infants School and Fulwell Junior School where he sat and passed the 11+. Monkwearmouth Grammar School followed and, in September 1959, the University of Nottingham where he gained a BSc in Mathematics. In September 1962 he moved to London and commenced training to be an actuary but,unsure about committing to a future in the insurance industry, abandoned that plan early in 1964. Following short spells as a supply teacher with the ILEA, and as a statistician with Tate & Lyle, the Labour election victory of 1964 inspired in him a belief that education might be a vocation and, in particular, educational research given his skills. Accordingly, he sought and secured a post at the National Foundation for Educational Research where he began work in October 1964. In the four years that followed he pushed forward earlier American work on item characteristic curve theory and did pioneering work in a new subject called item banking. Early in 1968, seeking postgraduate work in psychometrics and finding none in this country, he applied to enter the University of Chicago and was successful in winning a scholarship. Three years later he was awarded a PhD from that institution.