Since January 2002, Dr. Matthew E. Edwards has been a Professor of Physics at Alabama A&M University (AAMU), and served as the Dean of the School of Arts and Sciences from 2007 to 2011. Prior to 2002, academic positions he held included associate professorships at Spelman College and Fayetteville State University, and a visiting associate professorship and adjunct faculty position at the University of Pittsburgh, and an assistant professorship at the University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff. He has held several summer-faculty-research positions at Government Labs: the ROME Air Force Research Lab, NASA Langley Research Lab, and the Naval Research Lab. Dr. Edwards is a Condensed Matter physicist with expertise in (1) Density Functional Theory/Solitons Wave Theory, (2) the materials of electrooptics, (3) pyroelectric, resistivity, and dielectric properties of crystals and nano-particles doped organic thin films, and (4) STEM Education. Dr. Edwards has more than 40-refereed papers and journal proceedings and has made at least 55 professional and administrative presentations. He has guided five students to advanced degrees: three to the Ph.D., and two to the Master's degree, has served on more than 18 dissertation and thesis committees, and has peer-reviewed numerous research manuscripts. Currently, he is guiding two Ph.D. degree students and has obtained many grants, honors and awards. Dr. Edwards received the Ph.D. and Master's degrees in condensed matter physics from Howard University, Washington, D.C., and the B.S. Degree in engineering physics from North Carolina A&T State University. He is the founding Director of IHSEAR: Institute of Higher Science Education Advancements and Research. Moreover, in 2015, he was a guest editor for the American Journal of Materials Science. Additionally, he sits on the Board of Directors of three science journals and one science education journal, and serves on the executive committee of the Alabama Academy of Science.
Engaging students, to teach them new concepts, is the primary goal of college education, yet achieving this goal in the sciences and engineering is often a formidable task for teachers and their students. We have developed a practice that achieves this goal through constructivism and critical thinking, which requires the integration of in-depth knowledge of a topic, an adequate delivery/receiving method for what is being taught or learned, and the development of mental structures to retain better newly acquired knowledge. As strong advocates of Piaget and Popper’s Constructivism, we observe that the model gives a basis for understanding the intellectual acquisition of new knowledge and its distribution through effective teaching. In this regard, the onset of cognitive thinking and learning begins with recording, valuing, comparing, and contrasting events, or situations. We have found that once mental structures as developed in the mind are incorporated or used by instructors, the instructors’ teaching is enhanced, or when used by students in the learning process, their critical thinking is expanded, even when only one or sequentially new concepts are being taught. To that extent, we have developed mnemonics, acronyms, and other mental patterns of the mind, called “mental hooks,” “mental straights” and “mental S’s” to assist instructors in teaching or students in learning. Moreover, we have made the connection between how effective teaching is enhanced from the integration of critical thinking, an adequate delivery method, and mental structures. Both early career instructors and students, desiring to achieve effective teaching or learning, respectively, can benefit from these aspects of Piaget and Popper’s Constructivism and methods of critical thinking.
