Expertise: Climate science education; Evolution education; Public understanding of science; Literacy

Dr. Gale M. Sinatra is the Stephen H. Crocker Professor of Psychology and Education at Rossier. She is currently serving as the President of the American Psychological Association’s (APA) Division 15 (Educational Psychology) (https://apadiv15.org/). She serves as Associate Editor of the APA journal, Psychological Bulletin. She is a Fellow of APA, American Educational Research Association (AERA), and the Society for Text and Discourse. Her areas of expertise include climate science education, evolution education, STEM learning, conceptual change learning, and the public understanding of science.

Sinatra heads the Motivated Change Research Lab at USC (https://www.motivatedchangelab.com/), the mission of which is understanding the cognitive, motivational, and emotional processes that lead to attitude change, conceptual change, and successful STEM learning. Her areas of expertise include climate science education, evolution education, conceptual change learning, and the public understanding of science. Sinatra’s model of conceptual change learning describes how motivational factors contribute to the likelihood that individuals will change their thinking about a scientific topic.Sinatra currently serves as Co-PI on a National Science Foundation (NSF) grant, Re-Living Paleontology: Studying How Augmented Reality Immersion and Interaction Impact Engagement and Communicating Science. In collaboration with her partners at USC’s Institute for Creative Technologies (ICT) and the Natural History Museum, the project team is building an AR exhibit at La Brea Tar Pitts and Museum to support visitor’s engagement with science. She is also currently working on a co-authored volume on public understanding of science with her collaborator, Dr. Barbara Hofer of Middlebury College, VT to be published by Oxford University Press in 2020.