Tina Grotzer

Assistant Professor of Education

Profile

Tina Grotzer is an assistant professor of education at HGSE, a principal investigator at Harvard Project Zero, and a faculty member at the Center for Health and the Global Environment at Harvard Medical School. Her research identifies ways in which understandings about the nature of causality impact our ability to deal with complexity in our world and to learn science. She directs the Understandings of Consequence Project, funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF), which identifies default assumptions about the nature of causality that students bring to their learning. She was recently awarded an Early Career Award from NSF to enable her to extend this inquiry in new directions and to fund the work of doctoral students studying with her. She is a Co-PI with Chris Dede on the EcoMUVES Project, funded by the Institute of Education Sciences (IES), the goal of which is to develop a virtual ecosystem to teach the inherent complex causal patterns in middle school. Her courses focus at the intersection of cognition and science and aim to facilitate public understanding of science. She has published in both academic journals and teacher-oriented publications. She is deeply committed to helping teachers use the knowledge gained through her research and has authored the Causal Patterns in Science Curriculum series. She collaborates with scientists from diverse organizations including the Cary Institute for Ecosystem Studies, and the Harvard Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. Grotzer has advised programs for children’s television, including science-oriented shows such as Disney’s Stanley and PBS’s It's a Big, Big World and forthcoming shows focused on sustainability. Prior to her work at HGSE, Grotzer was a program coordinator and teacher in public and private schools for 14 years. She received her Ed.M. (1985) and Ed.D. (1993) from HGSE.

Degrees

• Ed.D., Harvard University

• Ed.M., Harvard University