Dr. Rowe was best known for urging teachers to increase the time they allow students to answer questions in class. Her "Wait Time" research found that that giving students at least three seconds of time to answer a question greatly improved their learning.

Extending the wait time to 3-5 seconds:

Lengthened the responses from students
Spontaneous, appropriate responses increased
Fewer students failed to respond
Students appeared to have more confidence
Student to student exchanges increased; teacher-centered "show and tell" behavior decreased
Students asked more questions
Students proposed more investigations
Lower achieving students contributed more
Student achievement improved on cognitively more complex test items
Classroom discipline improved.

Calling most textbooks ''dull as dictionaries,'' Dr. Rowe said the best science teaching was the kind she received as a young girl from Albert Einstein, whom she encountered by chance beside a fountain at Princeton University. Einstein showed her how to look through her moving hands and create a strobe effect to see individual drops of water.

A native of New Jersey and a graduate of New Jersey State University, Dr. Rowe held advanced degrees from the University of California at Berkeley and Stanford. She directed a science education program in Harlem and toured rural Colorado in a trailer, coaching teachers on science instruction. In the 1970s, Dr. Rowe directed education research for the National Science Foundation and also visited China as part of the first science education delegation to that country.

Ms. Rowe was a great believer in magnifying glasses. The best way to persuade a child to wash his hands, she said, is for a parent to show a child his fingertips through a magnifying glass. In China, she gave a magnifying glass to schoolchildren so they could inspect the hairy arms of their visitors from the West.

One of her major projects was the "Science Helper" Project. After getting the top-secret clearance necessary to see the advanced technology of a CD-ROM, she decided it was the ideal way to archive the post-Sputnik science curricular material funded by the National Science Foundation. Through a generous grant from Carnegie Corporation, Dr. Rowe developed and published one of the first CD-ROMs ever made for education. Her "Science Helper K-8" CD contained 919 lessons on a single CD. She then turned to video to produce a collection of videos called "The Science Helper Video Series" designed to train parents and school staff people about the big ideas in science.

Dr. Rowe returned to the CD-ROM arena when she teamed with Dr. Emily Girault, Dr. Richard McCloud, and Dr. Frank Lawlor to produce the 3 CD set "Culture and Technology" which archived 15,000 pages of science and social studies materials for grades 5-12. A powerful search engine allowed teachers and curriculum designers to search along multiple perspectives to find lessons.

After her passing, her final project "Enhanced Science Helper" was completed in her honor, which updated the original Science Helper materials and made them editable by teachers.

Dr. Rowe worked with doctoral students at Columbia, Stanford, and the University of Florida and always enjoyed discussing scientific principles with little children.

Research Articles

Wait Time: Slowing Down may be a way of speeding up!

Reflections on Wait Time: Some methodological questions

Why Don't Blacks Pick Science?

Help is denied those in need

What's happening in science - The NAEP

Teachers who care

Evaluating student attentiveness to science and technology

Science and Fate Control: Implications for the teaching of primary level science

Wait time and rewards as instructional variables: Their influence on language, logic, and fate control