James G. Greeno (May 1, 1935 – September 8, 2020) was an American experimental psychologist and learning scientist whose research focused on learning and problem solving with conceptual understanding, using scientific concepts and methods of association theory, computational cognitive modeling, and discourse analysis.
[1] While a student at the University of Minnesota, Greeno also studied philosophy with Herbert Feigl, May Brodbeck, Wilfred Sellars, Alan Donagan and D. B. Terrell.
[2] In 1976 he joined scholars at the Learning Research and Development Center and the Department of Psychology at the University of Pittsburgh, working especially with Lauren Resnick and Robert Glaser.
From 1987 to 2003 he was the Margaret Jacks Professor of Education at Stanford University, where he was also Director of the Symbolic Systems Program from 1989 to 1992.
In 1987, Greeno, John Seely Brown, and David Kearns co-founded the Institute for Research on Learning.