Can self-awareness transform the way we think, teach, and live? How can understanding our own minds make learning more meaningful, creative, and humane?

Tina Grotzer is a Principal Research Scientist and faculty member at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, where she also serves as Faculty Director of the Next Level Lab. With decades of work in cognitive science and education, she studies how people develop understanding in complex systems, how they unlearn misconceptions, and how they apply learning to real-world contexts like climate change and sustainability. She has led projects at Project Zero and the EcoLearn team, received multiple NSF awards, and continues to shape how educators think about cognition, causality, and the future of learning.

In this episode, Tina and I explore what it really means to learn—not just to absorb information, but to transform our ways of seeing the world. We talk about metacognition, the art of reflecting on one’s own thinking, and how that awareness allows us to become what she calls “expert learners.” She explains why unlearning is often harder than learning, how our brains resist new information, and what neuroscience reveals about confirmation bias and attention. Together, we reflect on the emotional side of learning—the fear and wonder that come with confronting complexity, and how courage, curiosity, and community make that journey possible.

We also discuss how schools can better prepare students to navigate uncertainty in what Tina calls a “VUCA world”—volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous. Drawing from her work with immersive learning environments and her course Becoming an Expert Learner, she shows how understanding the mind can empower students to think more deeply, act more wisely, and hold humility in a world overflowing with information. This conversation reminds us that learning is not the mastery of facts, but the continual process of becoming more aware, more capable, and more human.