About

Anne E. Cunningham is a Distinguished Professor in the Learning Sciences and Human Development Cluster at the Berkeley School of Education. She also serves as the UCB Director of the Joint Doctoral Program in Special Education. Dr. Cunningham is a developmental scientist known for her research on literacy and development across the lifespan, examining the cognitive and motivational processes underlying reading ability and exploring the interplay of context, development, and literacy instruction. Her work has significantly contributed to understanding how children acquire reading skills and how teacher knowledge impacts early literacy development. Throughout her career, Dr. Cunningham has been recognized with several prestigious research fellowships from organizations such as the National Academy of Education, the National Science Foundation, and the McDonnell Foundation Cognitive Studies for Educational Practice. She has served as a principal investigator on projects related to teacher professional development and early literacy, including initiatives funded by the U.S. Department of Education. Dr. Cunningham is a Fellow of the American Psychological Association and the American Educational Research Association, and she actively contributes to the academic community through editorial roles on several journals and participation in literacy initiatives and expert panels. Her publications include books, edited volumes, and numerous articles focused on early literacy, teacher knowledge, and reading development.

Research topics

• Artificial Intelligence
• Computer Science
• Mathematics education
• Linguistics
• Psychology
• Developmental psychology
• Pedagogy

Selected publications

• Examining young children’s transitions from drawing into early writing

  Early Childhood Research Quarterly · 2025-01-01 · 1 citations

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• Teaching Parents of At-Risk Preschoolers to Employ Elaborated and Non-Elaborated Vocabulary Instruction During Shared Storybook Reading

  Journal of Research in Childhood Education · 2021 · 9 citations

  Senior authorCorresponding
  • Computer Science
  • Psychology
  • Artificial Intelligence

  This study examines the influence of a parent workshop intervention on vocabulary acquisition of at-risk preschool children during parent-child shared storybook reading. Sixty-nine parents were randomly assigned to either treatment or control group. In the treatment condition, parents were taught to implement elaborated vocabulary instruction (definitions, synonyms, and examples) and non-elaborated vocabulary instruction (simple definitions only) during shared storybook reading (SSR). In the control group (stories only), parents read the same storybooks as the treatment families but did not provide direct vocabulary instruction. Children’s vocabulary learning was assessed using a researcher-designed assessment, Big Words for Little People (BWLP), at three time points during the study: before, after, and 14 days following the end of the intervention. The results suggest that meaningful explanations of unfamiliar words during parent-child shared storybook reading may be a viable strategy for fostering vocabulary learning, which is critical for later reading achievement.

  PublisherDOI

• The Effect of Orthographic Neighbors on Second‐Grade Students’ Spelling Acquisition

  Reading Research Quarterly · 2019-12-19 · 10 citations

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  ABSTRACT Many words in English resemble one another in multiple ways. Words with similar spellings are referred to as orthographic neighbors . The purpose of this within‐subject experimental study was to examine the effect of orthographic neighbors on the spelling acquisition of second‐grade students. In each of five sessions of a computer‐based experiment, 71 participants were presented with two prime words and prompted to learn the spelling of seven novel words. The latter seven words were control words (no meaningful connection with the corresponding prime word) and neighbor words (words representing various types of connections with the corresponding prime word). Spelling tasks were administered twice: immediately after the experiment and two days later. The findings suggest that spelling acquisition depends on two critical factors: orthographic neighbor type and orthographic processing ability. Students’ spelling acquisition was supported by analogizing rime neighbors (e.g., rain / vain ). However, facilitative effects were not found for substitution neighbors (e.g., rain / ruin ) and transposition neighbors (e.g., clam / calm ). Additionally, a student’s level of orthographic processing was an important determinant of spelling acquisition; students with well‐developed orthographic processing ability correctly learned the novel words regardless of the presence of rime neighbors. In contrast, acquiring spelling was far more difficult for students with less developed orthographic processing ability, but their spelling acquisition was strongly facilitated by the presence of rime neighbors. Implications of this research are (a) learners’ orthographic processing skills should be considered when designing spelling instruction and (b) early elementary students need instructional support when making orthographic analogies for substitution and transposition neighbors.

  PublisherDOI

• Word-Level Evidence of the Role of Phonological Decoding During Orthographic Learning: A Direct Test of the Item-Based Assumption

  Scientific Studies of Reading · 2018-05-22 · 4 citations

  articleSenior author

  The goal of this study was to test the item-based assumption of the self-teaching hypothesis by reanalyzing Cunningham’s (2006) data. In Cunningham’s study, 37 first graders participated in a self-teaching experiment, and their orthographic learning was measured by a spelling task and an orthographic choice task. A 2-level logistic regression model was used to analyze accuracy of phonological decoding of a target word and spelling acquisition of that word. The findings suggest that the probability of spelling a target word correctly increases as the decoding accuracy of the target word increases. In contrast, this relation was not found for the orthographic choice task. The discrepancy in the results between the 2 dependent measures might be due to the difference in cognitive processes required to complete a production task as opposed to a recognition task. The current findings provide item-based evidence for the accuracy of phonological decoding on participants’ performance on a spelling task.

  PublisherDOI

• Preschool children’s early writing: repeated measures reveal growing but variable trajectories

  Reading and Writing · 2018-08-09 · 33 citations

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• Orthographic Processing in Models of Word Recognition

  2015-02-17 · 6 citations

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• Teachers’ Knowledge About Beginning Reading Development and Instruction

  Oxford University Press eBooks · 2015-01-07 · 8 citations

  book-chapter

  Abstract This chapter focuses on the body of disciplinary and pedagogical knowledge required to provide high-quality beginning reading instruction to young children. The chapter examines quality literacy instruction from a historical perspective, reviews what science tells us about the successful teaching of reading, explores why teachers are not consistently teaching beginning reading in ways that are aligned with best practices, and provides recommendations for how the eld can support teachers in developing the knowledge needed to improve student reading outcomes. The goal is to provide research-based suggestions for strengthening both the content and delivery of teacher professional development in the area of literacy, and to demonstrate that these suggestions have the power to affect child outcomes. Key Words: teacher knowledge, teacher education, professional development, reading, word recognition Anne E. Cunningham and Colleen Ryan O’Donnell Teachers’ Knowledge about Beginning Reading Development and Instruction

  PublisherDOI

• Professional development in emergent literacy: A design experiment of Teacher Study Groups

  Early Childhood Research Quarterly · 2014-12-16 · 55 citations

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• The effects of early home literacy environments on fourth-grade literacy achievement: an international comparison

  International Journal of Quantitative Research in Education · 2014-01-01 · 11 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  It is well known that the home environment is a major factor in a child’s literacy development. Exactly how different home-environmental factors play out across different national contexts is not as well understood. Using data from the 2011 Progress in International Reading and Literacy Study (PIRLS), we tested for structural invariance in the relationship between early childhood home literacy practices and later fourth-grade achievement among students across 52 countries or regions within countries (N = 106,297–109,582), while controlling for background characteristics. Findings indicate that the effect of many aspects of the home environment prior to school age, including adult-child interactions and parental values and beliefs about reading, may interact with national factors, particularly factors relating to government-subsidised preschool programmes. Implications include that any early home reading intervention efforts should include thoughtful consideration of the national policies and funding for preschool learning.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Matthew Effects (Rich Get Richer)

  Encyclopedia of Language Development · 2014-01-01 · 1 citations

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Recent grants

• IERI: Teachers' Disciplinary Knowledge of Reading and its Relationship to K-3 Pedagogy and Student Achievement

  NSF · $100k · 2001–2003

Frequent coauthors

• Keith E. Stanovich

  University of Toronto

  32 shared

• Dorothy J. Feeman

  Marywood University

  5 shared

• Jamie Zibulsky

  5 shared

• Richard F. West

  4 shared

• Robin Irey

  University of California, San Francisco

  4 shared

• Yi-Jui Chen

  University of South Florida

  4 shared

• Kathryn E. Perry

  University of California, Berkeley

  3 shared

• Paula J. Stanovich

  Portland State University

  3 shared

Awards & honors

• Research fellowships from the National Academy of Education
• Research fellowships from the National Science Foundation
• Research fellowships from the McDonnell Foundation Cognitive…
• Fellow of the American Psychological Association, Division 1…
• Fellow of the American Psychological Association, Division 7…