P. David Pearson

P. David Pearson was a faculty member in the School of Education at the University of California, Berkeley, where he served as Dean from 2001-2010. He also held an appointment as a Professor of the Graduate School and was the Evelyn Lois Corey Emeritus Chair in Instructional Science.

He wrote and co-edited several books about research and practice, most notably the Handbook of Reading Research, now in its fourth volume. He served on the boards of many educational research journals e.g., Reading Research Quarterly, Science, Journal of Literacy Research, Review of Educational Research, Journal of Educational Psychology, Cognition and Instruction, Research in Teaching English, and Review of Educational Research. He served multiple terms as editor of 3 major research publications-Reading Research Quarterly, NRC Yearbook, and Review of Research in Education. His 300+ books, articles and chapters, written with over 200 co-authors, appeared in a range of outlets for a wide range of audiences—teachers, scholars, and policy makers.

Pearson served as an advisor to the National Academy of Science, the Children's Television Workshop (now the Sesame Workshop), a myriad of school districts and state agencies, and many educational public and private educational enterprises. He has been a reading program author for several publishers, including Ginn & Co. (Ginn Reading Program), Silver Burdett & Ginn (World of Reading and Literature Works), National Geographic (Reading/Writing Workshop), and Pearson Scott-Foresman (Reading Street). Pearson was also active in professional organizations, serving the International Reading Association (IRA) and the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) in many capacities (including the IRA Board of Directors), both the National Reading Conference (NRC) and The National Conference of Research in English as President, and the American Association of Colleges of Teacher Education as a member of the Board. 

Pearson received his B.A. in History from the University of California Berkeley, after which he taught elementary school in California and went on to complete his Ph.D. in Reading Education at the University of Minnesota. He completed post-doctoral study at the University of Texas, Austin and Stanford University.