Dr. David Sokoloff, a physicist and professor emeritus from the University of Oregon, has been named the 2020 winner of the Hans Christian Oersted Medal. The American Association of Physics Teachers made the announcement on Oct. 30.
AAPT has been distributing the award since 1936 and according to its website, recipients are chosen based on their “outstanding, widespread, and lasting impact on the teaching of physics.”
Sokoloff considers the award a crown jewel in his 30-plus years of studying and developing strategies for physics education. “It’s a really big honor,” he said. “From the point of view of somebody having an impact on physics education, it is the supreme honor.”
AAPT executive officer Dr. Beth Cunningham said she “wasn’t surprised at all” to find out that Dr. Sokoloff had won the award. “The Oersted medal is really the most prestigious award that AAPT bestows,” she said. “If there’s anybody who’s had a huge impact on the teaching of physics, one person that really comes to the top is David Sokoloff.”
After earning his doctoral degree at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1972, Sokoloff became a faculty member at Western Illinois University and the University of Michigan, Dearborn. He taught at UO from 1978 to 2003 but holds the title “professor emeritus” and still has an office at the university.
Dr. Richard Taylor, the UO physics department head, described Sokoloff as “ahead of his time” and “a pioneer” in physics education. Taylor credited Sokoloff for helping form the current landscape of the university’s physics department and for introducing tutorials, which are interactive classes similar to labs or discussion sections. “You’re very familiar with it, but 20 years ago, that was quite an unusual thing and David was one of the people who helped develop this,” he said.
Sokoloff has been conducting Physics Education Research since 1986 and continues to teach at workshops internationally, including visits to Ethiopia, Zimbabwe, India, Indonesia and Peru. The workshops introduce high school and university teachers to techniques he has gathered from his research, which has largely revolved around active learning in physics.
Reflecting on working with teachers in his workshops, Sokoloff said, “In most cases, we’re going in there and what we’re doing is completely new for them because most places in the world, it is still true that physics and all sciences are taught by the students sitting there and somebody lecturing at them, and the vast amount of physics education research over the last 20-30 years has shown that students don’t learn physics that way.”
“Students are not blank slates,” he said, “you can’t lecture to them and change what’s in their heads because what’s in their heads is very often based on real observations that they made.”
This idea has been a driving factor behind Sokoloff’s research and career path, and Cunningham, who taught in higher education for almost 20 years, can attest to his views on studying physics effectively. “The best way for a student to learn physics is by doing physics,” she said, “so active learning is incredibly important and he’s developed some really great materials to help get students actively engaged.”
Regarding the high demand for Sokoloff’s workshops, Taylor said, “He is constantly getting invitations from all over the world for him to be flown there to talk about what he’s done, so he clearly had an enormous impact.”
“Aircraft tickets cost a lot of money, and they could ask somebody else, but they don’t,” Taylor said. “They ask David Sokoloff.”
Sokoloff will now be named alongside past recipients of the Oersted Medal, including such notable figures as Carl Sagan, Mildred S. Dresselhaus, Frank Oppenheimer, Carl Wieman and Richard Feynman. “To see my name in that group is great,” Sokoloff said. “But when you come down to it, still, the excitement comes in doing that work more so than getting an award and giving a talk at the meeting.”
AATP will officially present Sokoloff with the medal at its winter meeting in Orlando, which is set to take place Jan. 18-21. Sokoloff will be giving a presentation called, “If Opportunity Doesn’t Knock, Build a Door: My Path to Active Dissemination of Active Learning,” which will highlight lessons he has learned throughout his career about taking initiative.
“When you find an opportunity don’t be afraid to take advantage of it because the worst that can happen is somebody will say no, Sokoloff said. “In my life, when I really wanted something to happen, I didn’t care if I made a fool of myself asking for it to happen because first of all, I learned over the years, in most cases, it does happen.”
“Maybe it’s because the things I was asking for were not unreasonable,” he said,” because what I wanted to do and what I was trying to change needed to be changed, and the people who I was dealing with understood that.”
