University of Wisconsin Oshkosh physics professor Mark Lattery received the David Hestenes Award for Exceptional Contributions to Modeling Instruction at the 2021 American Modeling Teachers Association annual summer meeting.
Lattery joined the UW Oshkosh faculty in 1997.
Mark Lattery
The modeling instruction method is a guided-inquiry approach to teaching science that organizes instruction around a coherent storyline of model development. This method provides content instruction while students are immersed in the process of doing science. Research has shown students in modeling instruction classrooms perform significantly better on measures of conceptual knowledge compared with similar students in traditional classrooms
Lattery has created multiple, engaging, research-based continuing education course experiences for current physics teachers in which they can see modeling instruction in action and learn how it can be used in their classroom.
Through his graduate-level classes at UWO, he has created networks of veteran modelers to help teachers who have not been through a modeling workshop yet and need guidance on how to begin modeling.
He has reached many teachers who may have heard of modeling but haven’t thought to use it themselves. Through the course experience and testimonies of modeling teachers who have taken his courses, the modeling instruction method has reached a much larger audience.
Lattery has a doctorate in experimental particle physics from the University of Minnesota. He recently served as president of the Wisconsin Association of Physics Teachers. He is the author of Deep Learning in Introductory Physics: Exploratory Studies of Model-Based Reasoning.
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