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Department
Teaching and Learning
Office Location
263 Wyatt
Mailing Address
Peabody #330
230 Appleton Place
Nashville, TN 37203-5721
Direct Phone
615-343-4792
Fax Number
615-322-2946
Email Address
David Dickinson
Professor of Education, Interim Department Chair
Ed.D., Harvard Graduate School of Education, 1982
Research Area
Early literacy development, professional development
Professor Dickinson is interested in the home and classroom factors that support children's acquisition of language and literacy abilities. His work addresses both basic questions about the role of language in literacy and in practical questions about strategies for improving the literacy-learning opportunities of children. Basic research questions that he studies relate to the role of language development in the consolidation of young children's linguistic, cognitive, and social abilities in fostering literacy growth. Professor Dickinson's applied interests include efforts to identify strategies that result in enhanced learning and in work developing techniques and systems for delivering materials and professional development to teachers that are effective and cost effective.
Short Biography
David Dickinson is professor and interim Chair of the Department of Teaching and Learning at Vanderbilt University's Peabody School of Education. After graduating from Oberlin College and while working toward his M. Ed at Temple University, he taught elementary school in the Philadelphia area for five years. He taught African-American children from working class homes and became interested in the role of language in literacy. He pursued his interest in language and cognition as he worked on his doctorate at Harvard's Graduate School of Education.
After studying the association between conceptual development and vocabulary learning, he and Catherine Snow embarked on a longitudinal study of the contributions of homes and preschool classrooms to language and literacy development. They followed low-income children from age three into middle school. He was responsible for studying children's classroom experiences, and found evidence that specific kinds of classroom experiences contribute to children's long-term language and literacy development. The results of this study are described in Beginning Literacy with Language.
Realizing the pressing need to enhance classroom support for language and early literacy he worked with colleagues from Education Development Center (EDC) to develop and study professional development interventions and create tools for describing classroom supports for literacy and language including the Early Language and Literacy Classroom Observation (ELLCO).
As evidence mounted that preschool classrooms too often lack sufficient intellectual challenge or intentional support for language, Judith Schickedanz and Dickinson co-authored Opening the World of Learning (OWL), a comprehensive preschool curriculum.
He has authored numerous articles and co-authored books that include two volumes of the Handbook of Early Literacy Research. He continues to examine language supports in classrooms and challenges associated with enhancing program quality.
Currently he is studying the impact of OWL in a large Head Start program and is helping to lead an Early Reading First Project in Nashville. He has participated on numerous national advisory panels, was a Commissioner for the National Association for the Education of Young Children in the revision of its accreditation standards and now is on a National Academies of Science committee that is examining the relationship between children's academic language abilities and the achievement gap.