By Carmela Jones, MNS
In my first summer chemistry modeling workshop at the University of Hawai'i, they gave us a reading assignment from a series of talks by Dr. David Hestenes. He was considered the father of MI from Arizona State University. On that day, all his name meant to me was just a name. One day in the not-too-distant future, I would learn the backstory and get to know many of the people around the birth of MI, including Dr. Hestenes.
In that same summer, Dr. David Hestenes happened to be in Hawai’i because his wife graduated from an island high school and they were visiting family. Since I kept in touch with Consuelo Rogers (my chemistry modeling workshop leader), she invited me to a lunch with Gheri Fouts (the physics modeling workshop leader) and Dr. Hestenes. That was my first interaction with him. He insisted we call him David. It was a surreal thing to meet the person whose talks we had been reading and discussing that summer. There were no “Ted Talks” back then so I had no idea what to expect; I had never even heard his voice before that.
David was a slim figure with a gray frame including a mustache and beard. He had gentle eyes and a wide grin. I found him to be quite personable. He was a philosophy undergraduate major who earned his PhD in physics. He was very intelligent, cultured and artistic. He quoted a poem he wrote while he served in the military as we ate lunch. I really liked him. His legacy to the academic world was three-pronged: Modeling Instruction, Geometric Algebra, and a Unified Field Theory. I hoped to have more chances to network with him in the future, which I did.
David was brilliant. He was gifted at deconstructing complex concepts into the simplest and most easily understood units. He then helped you reconstruct the information to build a wonderfully elegant mental model. He taught science teachers how to do that with physics and chemistry. He developed Modeling Instruction and through one of his graduate students, Malcolm Wells, expanded it to high school.
Malcolm had been a high school teacher for many years. He used curriculum from the Physical Science Study Committee (PSSC) from the 1960’s and 1970’s. Malcolm, with that background and under the astute guidance of David Hestenes, adapted Modeling Instruction for high school physics. He used the Force Concept Inventory (FCI) to demonstrate the efficacy of this new pedagogy. Sadly, Malcolm Wells passed away prematurely due to Lou Gehrig’s disease.
In tribute to Malcolm, David Hestenes, along with several colleagues, applied and received National Science Foundation grants, which helped train many teachers nationally and globally in this pedagogy. They also, to honor Malcolm, wrote articles in many scientific journals about Modeling Instruction.
References:
Hestenes, D. (1997). Cognitive foundations for the Modeling Method. In Modeling Legacy Website. Retrieved December 15, 2018, from http://modeling.asu.edu/modeling/HestenesLectures/4.CognitiveFnd.pdf
Jackson, J., Dukerich, L., & Hestenes, D. (2008, March). Modeling Instruction: an effective model for science education. Science Educator, 17(1), 10-17. Retrieved December 15, 2018, from https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/EJ851867.pdf
Wells, M., Hestenes, D., & Swackhamer, G. (1995). A modeling method for high school physics instruction, American Journal of Physics 63, 606-619.
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