Research Expertise and Interest

developmental psychology, interplay between culture and cognitive development, mathematical cognition in children, Papua New Guinea, urban and rural areas of Northeastern Brazil, elementary school classrooms, cognitive development, mathematics education

Research Description

Geoffrey Saxe studies the interplay between culture and cognitive development with a particular focus on numerical cognition. He has conducted his research in a variety of settings, including remote parts of Papua New Guinea, urban and rural areas of Northeastern Brazil, and elementary school classrooms in the United States (https://sites.google.com/view/lmrberkeleyedu). He has been awarded grants from the National Science Foundation, the Spencer Foundation, the Institute of Education Sciences, and the former National Institute of Education. Other prior awards include a Fulbright Fellowship, Fellowship at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, Fellowship at the Rockefeller Foundation's Bellagio Center, and an NIMH postdoctoral fellowship. He is past Editor-in-Chief for the journal Human Development, and an elected member of the National Academy of Education. He has been honored with two Presidential Citations from the American Educational Research Association for his theoretical and research contributions, one in 2010 and the other in 2022. His recent book, Cultural Development of Mathematical Ideas: Papua New Guinea Studies is the recipient of three book awards. These include the "best authored book award" from the Cognitive Development Society (2013), the Eleanor Maccoby Award (2015) from the American Psychological Association (Div 7), and the Sterling Prize (2014) from the American Anthropological Association (Psychological Anthropology). Website:  http://www.culturecognition.com/