Tina Grotzer

Tina Grotzer is a principal research scientist, a member of the faculty of education, and a senior researcher at Project Zero. She is an expert in the learning sciences and cognitive sciences. She has been working in grounded, informal and formal contexts for applying cognitive science findings for three decades. She teaches courses in sustainability, complexity, and climate change as well as cognition and learning, and its applications to learner behaviors, pedagogy, instruction and school design. Her work considers what it means to be an expert learner and how to leverage research towards supporting students in developing adaptive expertise to help them learn how to learn about and navigate challenges of the future. Grotzer is the faculty director of the Next Level Lab (NLL) funded by Accenture Corporate Citizenship. The NLL focuses on the future of work in a volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous (VUCA) world. Her work with NLL seeks to redefine visions of optimal learning and work performance with project strands focused on what it means to be an expert learner and on preparing for green jobs for the future. 

Her earlier work as principal Investigator (PI) of the Cognition in a Complex World Lab studied ways in which infusing Causal Learning in the Classroom (CLiC) can support the development of sustainable thinkers and climate knowledgeable citizens. She was also a PI on the EcoLEARN team at the Harvard Graduate School of Education which develops virtual worlds and other immersive, technology-based experiences to support understanding of ecosystems dynamics. This research was funded by the Institute for Education Sciences (IES) and the National Science Foundation (NSF).

Her awards include a Career Award from the National Science Foundation (NSF), a Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE) from the U.S. Government for her research on learning to understand the complex causal dynamics of environmental sustainability, and the Morningstar Teaching Award from Harvard Graduate School of Education. She has written many research articles, articles for the general public, books, and curricula for the classroom. With colleague, Christopher Dede, she developed the EcoLEARN curriculum that leverages new technologies to teach complex ecosystems science concepts. She has worked on children’s television programming with PBS, Disney/ABC, and Microsoft and schools nationally and internationally. Prior to coming to Harvard, she was a district-wide administrator and teacher for over a decade.