Vivian L. Gadsden

Vivian L. Gadsden is the William T. Carter Professor of Child Development and Education at the University of Pennsylvania's Graduate School of Education, where is is also Director of the National Center on Fathers and Families, Associate Director of the National Center on Adult Literacy, and Co-Faculty Director of the Penn Early Childhood and Family Research Center. At the University, she served as Education Graduate Group Chair from 1996 to 2004 and as Chair of the Faculty Senate in 2022-2023.

Her research, scholarly interests, and writing focus on learning and literacies across the life-course and address issues of equity, access, and change for young children and families in historically marginalized communities. The work highlights the intergenerational and cross-cultural nature of learning, literacy, and identity within families and the relationship between family members’ beliefs and practices around learning, educational access, and educational persistence. Her conceptual framework, family cultures, focuses on the interconnectedness among families’ political, cultural, and social histories and racialized identities.

Gadsden has served as principal investigator or co-investigator on grants from the Annie E. Casey Foundation, Ford Foundation, Mott Foundation, Spencer Foundation, National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, and National Institutes for Health. She was Co-Convenor for the Ethnography in Education Research Forum and Co-Faculty Director of the Penn Futures Project. She collaborates with colleagues across the university to examine issues of health and educational disparities among children, families, and communities.

Gadsden serves and has served on national foundation boards and review committees, including the Buffett Institute, the Foundation for Child Development (for which she was Vice Chair of the Board), and the Spencer Foundation; Congressionally mandated review committees; and White House initiatives as well as local boards such as the Philadelphia Mayor’s Commission on Literacy. She also chaired The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine’s Committee on Supporting Parents of Young Children, serving as lead author of the Committee’s report, Parenting Matters. Gadsden was co-editor of the journals Educational Researcher and Review of Research in Education (2009) and is general co-editor for the Review of Research in Education (2023 and 2025). She is a past President of the American Educational Research Association.