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Elizabeth Bonawitz Curriculum Vitae
Elizabeth Bonawitz is the David J. Vitale associate professor of Learning Sciences at Harvard University. Her work focuses on the basic science theories of learning with the broader goal of informing educational practice. Her research bridges two research traditions: cognitive development and computational modeling. Specifically, Bonawitz’s empirical approach focuses on the structure of children's early causal beliefs, how evidence and prior beliefs interact to affect children's learning, the developmental processes that influence children's belief revision and curiosity, and the role of social factors (such as learning from others) in guiding learning.
Bonawitz received her Ph.D. from MIT in Brain and Cognitive Sciences in 2009, working with Dr. Laura Schulz. She then completed a post-doctoral fellowship at the University of California, Berkeley with Thomas Griffiths and Alison Gopnik (2009-2013). She was an Assistant and Associate Professor of Psychology at Rutgers University, Newark from 2013 until 2020 when she moved to Harvard.
Bonawitz is the recipient of the James McDonnell Foundation Understanding Human Cognition Scholar Award and the Jacobs Early Career Research Fellowship. Her work is additionally currently funded by several NSF grants, the Caplan Foundation, and the Templeton Foundation. Her research has been published in top journals in psychology, cognitive science, and education. Additionally, she has served as Associate Editor for Open Mind (journal) and is on the governing board of the Cognitive Development Society and Children Helping Science.
The importance of high-quality STEM education cannot be overemphasized given our worlds increasing dependence on science and technology. There are at least two goals of high-quality STEM programs.First, to effectively deliver the current understanding of the core concepts in respective fields and second to create and nurture life-long active learners. Although query-based instruction is a teaching style that seems to effectively deliver core STEM concepts, while also nurturing active and inquisitive learners,there is disagreement regarding how these programs compare to direct instruction. One reason for this contention is that very little is known about the: i) nature of the cognitive and motivational mechanisms that support different kinds of learning in formal educational contexts, ii) how those cognitive and motivational mechanisms operate over longer time periods, and iii) how they operate across different communities. Here, we propose to address the gaps in our understanding by conducting a longitudinal study that will directly compare the consequences of a question-led guided learning curriculum with a direct instruction curriculum , in communities with varying SES levels. The proposed study will focus on childrens understanding of matter and its interactions in the early elementary school years. Elementary students struggle to learn matter concepts, yet these concepts are foundational for more complex core STEM concepts. Effective interventions must therefore be developed to support this acquisition. We deploy a longitudinal design that will include pre- and post-training data collection waves. We will experimentally compare the effects of a baseline condition that will receive no training, to the effects of two different teaching styles of curriculum that take place over six-modules. The Guided Query Learning curriculum will include pedagogical questions, self-explanation inquiries, and thought experiments. The Direct Instruction curriculum will only include direct instructions. Importantly, to better understand the underlying mechanisms engaged by the different types of instruction, we will measure childrens acquisition of a) factual; b) causal-explanatory; and c) conceptual knowledge, as well as their d) curiosity; e) perseverance; and f) attitudes toward self and learning. These follow-up measures will take place across several years to provide insight into short and longer-term effects of the different training styles. Furthermore, to better understand the role of different community and contextual factors, we will assess these factors incommunities with varying SES levels.
The proposed sub-award to Harvard University, Graduate School of Education, will primarily support time for Co-PI Elizabeth Bonawitz to oversee all aspects of the project. Bonawitz will work closely with PI LoBue at Rutgers University to develop methods, analysis, and publications resulting in the project.Specifically, the proposed research aims to combine the strengths of both educational and cognitive developmental research to achieve two goals: (1) to identify the components of causal reasoning that contribute to young childrens biological understanding in a practical domaincontagious illness, and (2) to harness these reasoning skills to equip children with a theoretical framework that allows them to make adaptive behavioral choices. The goal is to discover how children can employ natural dispositions towards intuitive theory building and extend that towards more explicit science reasoning and decision-making skills in counterintuitive science domains. We chose to study the development of causal reasoning about contagious illness in particular because it is a relevant and accessible topic to young children, and because it requires reasoning about ambiguous, counterintuitive, and unobservable entities, which can be generalized to scientific reasoning across many domains. Early intervention of this type can provide children with a solid foundation for a deeper understanding of scientific concepts, further motivate science learning and inquiry, and provide children with tools they can use to inform predictions and decision-making. Finally, the long-term health benefits of building childrens healthy behaviors towards contagion are broad. Dr. Bonawitz is an expert in this area and will help contribute to all aspects of the proposed work
The Jacobs foundation CRISP opportunity supports Dr. Bonawitz and her research program in four primary areas. First the funding will support a postdoctoral fellow who will help build high-risk, high-reward research projects to build on the science of learning with educational applications. Within this first goal, there are two primary research projects. The first project is towards work developing clearer basic science understanding of the role of prediction, thought experiment, pedagogical questions, and explanations to support belief revision in early childhood (with a focus on science concepts). The second project builds on this work to investigate the impact of science interventions in early elementary school years that are low cost and can be applied globally. Second, the funding will support scientific capacity building by helping support a visiting doctoral student from a nation under-represented in sciences to collaborate on the above research projects. Third, funds will support scientific outreach, including open science publication and pay for staff to collaborate on writing a public-facing white-paper on our project fundings. Finally, funding will support the time that Dr. Bonawitz will dedicate to Jacobs and the LEAP foundation, providing advice on projects related to belief revision in early childhood, curiosity, and the role of home and school settings in pedagogical learning.
The success of every course of action we choose in our daily lives depends on the accuracy of our intuitive beliefs. Given the importance of these beliefs to our survival, one would think that we would be strongly motivated to get our picture of the world right. When there is an opportunity to learn, we should explore. Yet, by adulthood, it seems that the desire to feel right often outweighs the drive to explore new ideas so that we can be accurate. For example, typical adults will choose to give up a chance at more money in order to avoid reading information that conficts with their beliefs; in fact, adults rate the experience of simply listening to viewpoints that confict with their own as comparable in pain to getting a tooth pulled (Frimer, Skitka, Motyl, 2017). Epistemic indifference does not extend all the way back into early childhood, however. My work has demonstrated that young children are sophisticated learners who are highly motivated to explore. Yet we currently know very little about the nature of the individual drives and early childhood experiences that maintain and foster this love of learning. Instead, our culture has created many experiences that diminish it. For example, as children progress through the American school system, they rate themselves as less engaged and less interested in learning new things (Gallup, 2017). It thus becomes critical to ask, how do we foster and maintain minds that love to learn? My research program aims to provide answers to these questions. Computational models of learning provide a powerful approach to specify and explore these questions. Furthermore, combining the tools of computational modeling and developmental psychology creates a unique research program that can characterize the role of early childhood experiences in shaping the epistemic stance taken throughout the lifespan.
Bonawitz, a developmental cognitive scientist, joined the Ed School in 2020
Associate Professor Elizabeth Bonawitz explores why curiosity is essential to learning and how schools can better protect it
A new study shows that allowing students space for mental exploration can be as valuable as hands-on lessons
Curiosity is present from birth, but there are questions about whether or not we are able to continue to foster curiosity during childhood which can later impact their learning, growth, and the joy of discovery