Mary Budd Rowe

Mary Budd Rowe (1925–1996) was an American science educator and education researcher, best known for her work on "wait time," which showed that when teachers wait longer for children to answer a question, learning and inference can dramatically improve. She headed the science education research division of the National Science Foundation, was an advisor to several influential educational television shows, and served on numerous national standards and review committees. On her middle school's annual visit to Princeton, she encountered the physicist gesturing and moving his hands rapidly, looking at a fountain. He asked Rowe, then in seventh grade, if she could stop the water long enough to see the shapes of the droplets. He then showed her how to wave her fingers to create a strobe effect and examine the shapes the water made.

"Nearly half a century later," wrote Rowe in 1995, "I've spent an entire career trying to impart Einstein's words to adults and children all over the world: Science is exploring, and exploring is fun." Students' answers increased in length by 300 to 700 percent, contained more inferences and speculative teaching, and shifted the classroom experience to more teacher and student exchanges — relying less on teacher show-and-tell. Moreover, the number of "I don't know" and non-responses decreased. Rose found that "sanctioning behavior"—either positive praise or negative feedback—discouraged the quality of student responses. Even when positive praise was consistently offered, student response became questioning ("the answer is five?"); in essence, Rowe found, praise led students to be more focused on discovering whether the teacher would approve than on discovering how the scientific phenomenon worked. The panel recommended overhauling the approach to funding these programs, with far greater emphasis on assessing which programs were effective and coordinating across agencies. After the release of the report, Rowe said "We're in a competitive, almost life-death kind of struggle with other countries. And I don't think we can afford to invest big amounts in programs that don't work." Upon Rowe's death in 1996, Richard Shavelson, dean of the Stanford School of Education, lauded Rowe as "one of the giants in the field of science education and clearly looked upon as a leader."

Robert H. Carleton Award for National Leadership in Science Education, National Science Teachers Association, 1981