12/2/2010
Professor of Physics Jose Mestre has been elected a Fellow of the American Physical Society "for ground-breaking applications of principles and methodologies from cognitive science to physics education research and for elucidating expert-novice performance differences in physics learning and problem solving."
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Professor of Physics Jose Mestre has been elected a Fellow of the American Physical Society "for ground-breaking applications of principles and methodologies from cognitive science to physics education research and for elucidating expert-novice performance differences in physics learning and problem solving."
Trained as a nuclear physicist, Mestre turned his research interests to the questions of how students learn physics early in his career. He has adapted tools developed by cognitive scientists and educational psychologists to investigate forefront issues in how scientific understanding develops and how it is best conveyed in instruction.
Mestre's research focuses on the organization and deployment of physics knowledge by experts and novices, addressing questions such as "What is the mechanism by which a beginner develops expertise in a complex domain such as physics?" "Why is it that the problem-solving skills for traditional textbook physics problems often develop faster than conceptual understanding?" "Why is appropriate transfer of knowledge, even across the same domain and across remarkably similar contexts, so difficult to achieve?"
To answer these questions, Mestre applies experimental techniques common in cognitive science to learn more fine-grained information about the nature of expertise, learning, and problem solving in the sciences.
Mestre received bachelor's and PhD degrees in physics from the University of Massachusetts in 1974 and 1979, respectively, and spent his entire career there until 2005, rising rapidly through the ranks from research associate to professor. He came to Urbana in August 2005, as a professor of physics and of educational psychology. In July 2010, he was named associate dean for research in the College of Education. As a member of the College of Education’s senior leadership team, Mestre is responsible for the overall research and scholarship activities of the College.
Election to fellowship in the American Physical Society is limited to no more than one-half-of-one percent of the Society's membership and is conferred following a rigorous, peer-reviewed selection process. Fellows are recognized internationally for their outstanding contributions to physics.
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Contact: Jose Mestre, Department of Physics, 217/333-0098.
Writer: Celia M. Elliott, Department of Physics, 217/244-7725.
Photo: Thompson-McClellan
If you have any questions about the College of Engineering, or other story ideas, contact Rick Kubetz, editor, Engineering Communications Office, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 217/244-7716.