Wittrock, M.C. 1931-2007 (Merlin C. Wittrock, Merlin Carl Wittrock)

OBITUARY NOTICE—

See index for CA sketch: Born January 3, 1931, in Twin Falls, ID; died of heart failure, November 28, 2007. Educator, administrator, and author. Wittrock believed that students learn better as active participants in the learning process, a theory now known as constructivist learning, and that students learn best when they can connect new data to a base of knowledge that they already understand, a generative learning theory. These concepts are what he taught for more than thirty-five years at the University of California in Los Angeles. He was also the founder and director of the Center for the Study of Evaluation of Instructional Programs and the director of the Division of Educational Psychology. After retirement from teaching in 1996, Wittrock supervised the university's extension program for intern teacher preparation for an additional ten years. His dedication was acknowledged with receipt of the Thorndike Award for Distinguished Psychological Research Contributions to Education from the American Psychological Association in 1986. Wittrock wrote The Brain and Psychology (1980) and coauthored The Neurophysiological and Cognitive Processes of Reading (1980). He edited several books, including The Evaluation of Instruction (1970), Learning and Instruction (1977), and The Future of Educational Psychology (1989).

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PERIODICALS

Los Angeles Times, December 8, 2007, p. B9.