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Wendell Potter Physics Recipient 1995-1996 Professor Potter has been the driving force behind a UC Davis-based outreach program aimed at improving the quality of science teaching in grades kindergarten through 12 in the Sacramento area and throughout the state. Initiated through a grant from the National Science Foundation, the program is now known as the California Science Project of Sacramento, one of 12 statewide projects to improve science education in the public schools. Professor Potter is co-director. As a new physics faculty member 25 years ago, Wendell Potter came to UC Davis believing he was an excellent teacher. After all, when he was a teaching assistant in graduate school, his sections always received the highest average scores on tests. But something was definitely wrong with his classes at UC Davis. "The students weren't getting it," Potter says. "They relied much more on memorization than understanding." His motivation to have students actually understand fundamental physics led him on a quest to find, nurture and share new methods of teaching science. Potter's resulting influence on students and teachers, from kindergarten to college, has rippled through the community and state and played a key role in helping establish a new framework for science education in public schools. Professor Potter provides pedagogical and science content instruction during the summer institutes and on many Saturdays during the academic year. Here, teachers gain confidence in their ability to think and reason rather than relying totally on memorization. They learn how to create learning environments in their own classrooms that encourage students to ask questions, to propose solutions and then to test them out. Teachers from the science project are working with colleagues to extend the new ideas. Others have assumed statewide leadership positions in the science education reform movement. Yet other science project participants are featured in a one-hour laser disk and manual Potter conceived, developed, wrote and edited. Among other activities, Potter is the main physical science author for the primary state document that determines how science is taught in grades K-9. He has also been involved in a number of projects to increase the number of underrepresented minorities who will teach science and math in K-12 in the public schools. |
