About Dave Paunesku

Dave Paunesku is a senior behavioral scientist at Stanford University and the founding director of PERTS, a nonprofit R&D institute. PERTS translates insights from the learning and developmental sciences into scalable tools, measures, and recommendations that educators use to cultivate student engagement and success equitably. Hundreds of thousands of educators and hundreds of schools and colleges use PERTS’ free, evidence-based resources.

Paunesku's work with academic, industry, and government partners has led to the development of evidence-based resources that have reached millions of learners worldwide. His work has been published in leading academic journals, including Nature, Psychological Science, and Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. It has also been featured in The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Education Week, Atlantic, USA Today, and The College Dropout Scandal.

PERTS projects have been funded by scientific and educational agencies and by private foundations, including the National Science Foundation, the Institute of Education Sciences, the U.S. Department of Education, the Raikes Foundation, Gates Foundation, Joyce Foundation, Overdeck Foundation, and Hewlett Foundation.

Paunesku serves on the advisory boards of Imagine and EL Education.

Paunesku grew up in Chicago before moving to the San Francisco Bay Area, where he co-founded PERTS with friends Carissa Romero, Ben Haley, and Chris Macrander. He earned a B.A. from the University of Chicago and a Ph.D. from Stanford University, where his dissertation was supervised by Professors Carol Dweck and Greg Walton. He lives in Oakland, California.

Contact

To request a workshop, presentation, or consulting engagement, email paunesku@gmail.com. For inquiries about PERTS, email contact@perts.net.

In the News

• The New York Times — Conquering the Freshman Fear of Failure
• The Wall Street Journal — New Ways to Fight ‘Imposter Fears’
• Stanford News — Online ‘Mindset’ Interventions Help Students Do Better in school, Stanford Research Shows
• Center for American Progress — Learning Mindsets and Skills: An Opportunity for Growth with the Every Student Succeeds Act
• Mind/Shift — How a Bigger Purpose Can Motivate Students to Learn
• EdSurge — Growing a Mindset with the Right Words
• Education Week — Could Parents Be Allies in Schools’ Efforts to Build Growth Mindsets in Students?
• Education Week — New Resources Developed to Help Mentors Encourage Growth Mindsets
• Mind/Shift — New Research: Students Benefit from Learning That Intelligence is Not Fixed
• USA Today — Short Videos to Teach ‘Growth Mindset’ to Students, Teachers
• The Atlantic — How to Motivate Students to Work Harder

Selected Publications

Paunesku, D. & Farrington, C.A. (2020). Measure Learning Environments, Not Just Students, to Support Learning and Development. Teachers College Record, 112. link

Okonofua, J.A., Paunesku, D., & Walton, G.M. (2016). A Brief Intervention to Encourage Empathic Discipline Cuts Suspension Rates in Half Among Adolescents. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. link

Yeager, D. S., Walton, G. M., Brady, S. T., Akcinar, E. N., Paunesku, D., Keane, L., ... & Gomez, E. M. (2016). Teaching a lay theory before college narrows achievement gaps at scale. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 201524360. link

Claro, S., Paunesku, D., & Dweck, C. S. (2016). Growth mindset tempers the effects of poverty on academic achievement. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 201608207. link

Yeager, D. S., Hanselman, P., Walton, G. M., Murray, J. S., Crosnoe, R., Muller, C., Tipton, E., Schneider, B., Hulleman, C.S., Hinojosa, C.P., Paunesku, D., Romero, C., Flint, K., Roberts, A., Trott, J., Iachan, R., Buontempo, J., Yang, S., Carvalho, C.M., Hahn, P.H., Gopalan, M., Mhatre, P., Ferguson, R., Duckworth, A.L., & Dweck, C. S. (2019). A national experiment reveals where a growth mindset improves achievement. Nature, 573(7774), 364–369. link

Paunesku, D., Walton, G.M., Romero, C.L., Smith, E.N., Yeager, D.S., & Dweck, C.S. (2015). Mindset interventions are a scalable treatment for academic underachievement. Psychological Science, 26(6), 784-93. link

Paunesku, D. (2013). Scaled-up social psychology: Intervening wisely and broadly in education. (Unpublished doctoral dissertation.) Stanford University. link

Yeager, D. S., Romero, C., Paunesku, D., Hulleman, C. S., Schneider, B., Hinojosa, C., ... & Trott, J. (2016). Using design thinking to improve psychological interventions: The case of the growth mindset during the transition to high school. Journal of Educational Psychology, 108(3), 374. link

Yeager, D.S., Henderson, H., Paunesku, D., Walton, G.M., D’Mello, S. Spitzer, B.J., & Duckworth, A.L. (2014). Boring but Important: A self-transcendent purpose for learning fosters academic self-regulation. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 107(4), 559-580. link

Romero, C., Master, A., Paunesku, D., Dweck, C. S., & Gross, J. J. (2014). Academic and emotional functioning in middle school: The role of implicit theories. Emotion, 14(2), 227. link

Smith, E. N., Romero, C., Donovan, B., Herter, R., Paunesku, D., Cohen, G. L., . . . Gross, J. J. (2017). Emotion theories and adolescent well-being: Results of an online intervention. Emotion. Advance online publication. link