Applying some of the same analytical skills that won him a Nobel Prize in physics, Kenneth G. Wilson believes a key to educational reform is discovering improvements and sharing them with others.
Too often, according to Wilson, educators come up with teaching breakthroughs that never leave their classrooms until someone stumbles across the same discovery.During an interview with the Deseret News, Wilson, who was in Salt Lake City Wednesday to deliver the 1997 Davern/Gardner Laureate Lecture at the University of Utah, discussed educational reform and changes in research universities.
By "pushing the envelope" in education as researchers have in science and technology, America can develop a better educational system, Wilson said, likening it to the effort that went into overcoming the sound barrier in flight.
"Or in the area of micro-electronics," Wilson added. "As each new component becomes smaller than the last one, researchers run the risk of getting stuck. It's a problem of taking it beyond the barrier, of doing more than has ever been done before."
And the same is true of education, he said. "We run the risk of getting stuck without educational research."
Wilson, who won the Nobel Prize in 1982 for his work on how bulk matter undergoes "phase transition," has been analyzing and applying new educational systems for much of the past decade.
The co-author of a book on educational reform, "Redesigning Education," Wilson has now turned his attention on a sequel of sorts that he says will spell out what educators of educators can do to bring America's education system into the 21st century.
He said he became interested in educational reform through a friend who started a program for physics teachers - "Physics by Inquiry" - at the University of Washington. Using a similar concept, Wilson helped implement a program called "Discovery" for middle school science and math teachers in Ohio.
Wilson said that while working on "Discovery," he realized the problems in the schools extended beyond math and science education. One possible solution, he said, is tapping into the discoveries of expert teachers.
For example, he cited the "Reading Recovery" program that was developed by a New Zealand teacher to identify and help beginning readers who are having problems. The program is now used in more than 8,000 elementary schools, including schools in Utah.
"You can make major changes providing you can demonstrate that those changes are better," Wil-son said.
Unfortunately, many teachers have to rediscover or reinvent improvements because they don't have access to the accomplishments of other teachers, he said. That's where research on teaching and support systems comes into play, Wilson said.
Training leaders of reform would be a good place to start, he said. As these leaders begin to address specific problems in education, they would also begin to create powerful support systems for reform, he said.
Wilson has also been assessing the future of research universities, which was the topic of his lecture at the U. According to Wilson, researchers themselves may be partly to blame for the political assaults on their institutions.
"The arguments in favor of research have grossly underestimated the importance of the research mission," Wilson said.
Also, critics often succeed in pitting research against education, though their goals are the same, he said.
An expert on computer science as well as physics, Wilson also commented on developing "virtual universities." While computer courses and distance learning have a place in higher education, particularly for ongoing training, he said they cannot replace a "regular university."
"It's hard to duplicate the interaction between a student and high-quality teacher in a classroom," he said.
Born in 1936 in Waltham, Mass., Wilson was an undergraduate at Harvard and obtained his doctorate at the California Institute of Technology. He joined Cornell University's physics faculty in 1963. In 1985, he became the director of Cornell's Center for Theory and Simulation in Science and Engineering.
In 1988, he moved to Ohio State University, where he was appointed the Hazel C. Youngberg Trustees Distinguished Professor. In addition to the Nobel Prize, Wilson shared Israel's Wolf Prize in physics.
His appearance at the U. was sponsored by the George S. and Dolores Dore Eccles Foundation.