Dr. Gale Sinatra is a Distinguished Professor and the Stephen H. Crocker Chair of Psychology and Education at Rossier. She is a Member of the National Academy of Education and a Fellow of the American Psychological Association (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 public understanding of science.

Sinatra’s current research focuses on understanding the cognitive and motivational processes that lead to successful STEM learning. Specifically, Sinatra explores the role of motivation and emotion in teaching and learning about controversial topics such as climate change and biological evolution. Her model of conceptual change learning describes how motivational factors contribute to the likelihood that individuals will change their thinking about a scientific topic. Her work has been cited thousands of times by scholars in psychology, education, and science teaching and learning. 

She is co-author with her collaborator, Dr. Barbara Hofer of Middlebury College, VT of Science Denial: Why It Happens and What to Do About It, published by Oxford University Press in 2021, see www.sciencedenialbook.com.

Sinatra’s previous appointments were as Professor of Educational Psychology at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas (UNLV) where she served on the faculty from 2000-2010 and as Interim Dean of the UNLV Graduate College; and prior to that, she was an Associate Professor of Education at the University of Utah. Sinatra received her B.S., M.S. and Ph.D. in Psychology from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. She has previously served as Editor of the APA Division 15 journal, Educational Psychologist and Vice President of AERA’s Division C, Learning and Instruction and President of APA's Division 15, Educational Psychology.