Associate Professor of Educational Leadership at The University of Texas at El Paso
About
Dr. Penelope Espinoza is an associate professor of educational leadership at The University of Texas at El Paso. Dr. Espinoza holds a doctoral degree in social psychology from the University of Michigan, and an undergraduate degree in psychology with a minor in anthropology from Stanford University. She was a Ford Foundation Dissertation Fellow and predoctoral fellow, and has held internships with ETS and the National Academy of Sciences. She has been a principal investigator, project director, and research consultant for grant projects funded by the National Science Foundation. Dr. Espinoza teaches graduate courses on quantitative research methods, statistics, and program evaluation, and actively serves on many thesis and dissertation committees. Dr. Espinoza was raised in El Paso, Texas, on the US-Mexico border and has the pleasure of raising her own family there.
Current Work:
Dr. Penelope Espinoza is currently involved with research that extends her previous work on stereotypic biases to examine obstacles in educational settings for members of underrepresented and disadvantaged social groups. She is specifically interested in the impact of stereotypic and implicit biases on decision-making by educational leaders, and the implementation of strategies to counter the effects of biased perceptions in educational settings. Dr. Espinoza is especially interested in how social cognitive biases pertaining to gender and race/ethnicity can be explicitly addressed in educational practice and policy.
Research Area Keyword(s):
Stereotypes, implicit bias, student achievement, gender bias, educational leadership
