David Dickinson (LSOE)

Promoted to full professor with tenure

Ed.D., Harvard University

Faculty member since 2002

Specialization: The development of language and early literacy skills of children from low-income families; preschool programs and early literacy

Representative publication: Toolkit for Assessing Early Literacy in Classrooms (Brookes Publishing, 2002)

“I came from the language development field. Child language people are interested in looking at children’s construction of ideas as related to information experiences—mothers talking to them, fathers talking to them. I have particularly focused on the contributions that preschools can make in supporting early literacy development. In too many preschools for low-income children, teachers just plain don’t talk to children except to control them. Most important in my research is the impact of the quality of conversation that preschool teachers have with children throughout the day: the variety of vocabulary, the extent to which the conversation gets children thinking, the energy teachers put into it.”