Dale H. Schunk is an educational psychologist, former Dean and current professor in the School of Education at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. He has researched the effects of social and instructional variables on cognition, learning, self-regulation and motivation. Schunk has served on the editorial boards of journals such as Contemporary Educational Psychology and Educational Psychology Review, and has authored many journal articles and book chapters on educational psychology. In addition to other books, he is author of the widely used textbook, Learning Theories: An Educational Perspective, and coauthor of Motivation in Education: Theory Research and Applications.

Schunk received the Albert J. Harris Research Award from the International Reading Association (1989), an Early Contributions Award from Division 15 (Educational Psychology) of the American Psychological Association (1982), and the Fulbright Distinguished American Scholar Award (1997). Before moving to Purdue, Schunk taught educational psychology at the University of Houston from 1979 to 1985 and at UNC-Chapel Hill from 1986 to 1993. He received his undergraduate education at the University of Illinois, and he earned an M.Ed. degree from Boston University and a Ph.D. from the Stanford Graduate School of Education