Chapter 6: Mary Budd Rowe: What a Researcher Can Say to Science Teachers

This chapter is based on a previously published article on the life and work of Mary Budd Rowe written by Julie Bianchini in 2008 for the journal Cultural Studies of Science Education. We thank the former graduate students and colleagues of Mary Budd Rowe who took the time to share their favorite stories of her. We are particularly indebted to the helpful suggestions of Francis Lawlor and Thomas Keating.

Mary Budd Rowe’s contributions to science education, just like the scientific enterprise itself, include both content and process. There is the content of Rowe’s work: her examination of the teaching and learning of science as inquiry; her identification of wait-time as central to productive classroom conversations; her drawing of connections across students’ lives, sense of fate, and science learning; and her exploration of ways new technologies could transform science curriculum and instruction. But there is also and, perhaps, more importantly, a tale of process. Rowe spent her career honing the simple yet powerful messages of science as story-making and of science teaching and learning as continuous inquiry. She then spread these messages to those she thought mattered most: teachers, in particular, elementary school teachers. It is indeed rare to find a scholar like Rowe whose research, teaching, and professional activities so closely aligned.