“Education should not be a way out of your neighborhood. It should be a tool for improving it . “
- Name: Jason Okonofua
- Education:
- B.A. in psychology and African American studies, Northwestern University
- Ph.D. in psychology, Stanford University
- Occupation: Professor/ Author
- Research Interests:
- education-based motivation; large-scale psychological intervention;
- social cognition; teacher-student relationships;
- Known For: Urban science education , Race, classs and diversity in education, Hip-Hop Education
- Awards: Distinguished Scholar Award, Stanford University, Vice Provost of Graduate Education, 2015;
People’s Choice Award; Cialdini Award, Society for Personality and Social Psychology, 2018
Dr. Jason Okonofua is a social psychologist in the Psychology Department at the University of California at Berkeley. Dr. Okonofua is interested in science-based and scalable strategies to combat inequity in society. His work touches subjects such as education, criminal justice, and business. He investigates how negative stereotypes can contribute to disparities in life outcomes and how that process can be dismantled.
Jason is also working on a project in collaboration with the Juvenile Justice Center in Alameda County to ease youth offender’s transition back into school. The work is leveraging relevant social psychological theory to test a large-scale intervention to help youth offenders see the promise in school settings to reach their goals and overcome challenges in the process. This project is poised to contribute to lacking literature on the challenges youth offenders face and how social psychology on mindsets can help them to adjust to new challenges they face.