Anne E. Cunningham (Ph.D., University of Michigan in Developmental Psychology) is a Professor of Cognition and Development at the University of California, Berkeley. Known for her research on literacy and development, she examines the cognitive and motivational processes that underlie reading ability and the interplay of context, development, and instruction. The role of teachers’ disciplinary and pedagogical knowledge in the teaching of reading is a second strand of her research program.

Her research has been supported by agencies such as the National Institute of Health (NIH), National Science Foundation (NSF), and the U. S. Department of Education Institute for Educational Studies (IES). Currently, she is studying the literacy and language development of high poverty urban preschool children in Newark, New Jersey and forms of professional development to support preschool teachers’ teaching of early literacy. She has been an elected board member of the Society for Scientific Study of Reading, American Educational Research Association (AERA), and a recipient of the International Reading Association’s Outstanding Dissertation of the Year Award. Dr. Cunningham has received several prestigious research fellowships from the National Academy of Education, Spencer Foundation, and the McDonnell Foundation Cognitive Studies for Educational Practice.

Dr. Cunningham is a former preschool and elementary classroom teacher and reading resource specialist. At Berkeley, she teaches the reading and language arts methods courses in the Developmental Teacher Education credential program as well as doctoral students in Human Development. She consults widely in the areas of children’s reading acquisition, effective instructional methods for the teaching of reading, and the cognitive consequences of wide reading. Dr. Cunningham serves on numerous state and national committees surrounding literacy development and instruction such as the Child Development and Behavior Branch at the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD), U.S. Department of Education, Reading First and Early Reading First Expert Panel, the National Institute for Family Literacy (NIFL) expert panel on Children’s Early Learning Development & School Readiness: Conceptual Frameworks, Constructs & Measures,and the National Early Literacy Panel (NELP) examining effective preschool literacy practices for later reading success.