Climate Week: "Educating for Climate Change in K-12: Discussion and Sharing of Resources" with Tina Grotzer

April 6, 2015 — "Educating for Climate Change in K-12: Discussion and Sharing of Resources" with Tina Grotzer, Associate Professor of Education, Harvard UniversityThe Harvard Graduate School of Education presents: "Educating for Climate Change in K-12: Discussion and Sharing of Resources" with Tina Grotzer, Associate Professor of Education, Harvard University.

Tina Grotzer is an associate 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 School of Public Health. She is a cognitive scientist whose research identifies ways in which understandings about the nature of causality impact our ability to deal with complexity in our world. Tina directs the Understandings of Consequence Research Unit. It has four dominant strands: 1) How reasoning about causal complexity interacts with our decisions in the everyday world; 2) How causal understanding develops in supported contexts; 3) How causal understanding interacts with science learning (with the goal of developing curriculum to support deep understanding); and 4) the public understanding of science given the nature of science, the nature of causal complexity and the architecture of the human mind. This work is funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) and she received a Career Award from NSF in 2009 to enable her to extend this inquiry in new directions and to fund the work of doctoral students studying with her. In 2011, she received a Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers, the highest honor given by the United States government to young professionals beginning their independent research careers.

Tina is a co-PI with Chris Dede on the EcoMUVE and EcoMOBILE Projects, funded by the Institute of Education Sciences (IES) and NSF, respectively. The projects involve developing and testing technological tools including virtual worlds and hand-held mobile devices to teach the inherent ecosystems complex causal dynamics to middle school students. Tina's courses focus at the intersection of cognition and science and aim to facilitate public understanding of science. She is deeply committed to helping teachers use the knowledge gained through her research and has authored the Causal Patterns in Science curriculum series. In 2012, she published a book entitled, Learning Causality in a Complex World. She collaborates with scientists from diverse organizations including the Cary Institute for Ecosystem Studies, and the Harvard Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. She has advised science and sustainability-oriented programs for children's television. Prior to her work at HGSE, Grotzer was a program coordinator and teacher in public and private schools for 14 years. She received her doctorate in 1993 and her master's in 1985 from Harvard University following her undergraduate degree at Vassar.