Professional Biography
Dr. Gadsden began her career teaching developmental English, reading, and educational psychology at Oakland and Wayne State Universities in Michigan. She also worked a research analyst in educational policy at Policy Studies Associates in Washington, D.C. Dr. Gadsden served for six years as associate director in the National Center on Adult Literacy. In 1994, she became the director of the newly founded National Center on Fathers and Families, an interdisciplinary policy research center focused on child and family well-being. At the University of Pennsylvania, she served as Education Graduate Group Chair from 1996 to 2004 and as Chair of the Faculty Senate in 2022–2023.
Dr. 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. Dr. 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. A former Spencer Postdoctoral Fellow and Resident Fellow, Dr. Gadsden is a Fellow of the American Educational Research Association, the Reading Hall of Fame, the National Academy of Education, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
Research Interests and Current Projects
Dr. Gadsden’s 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.
Her collaborative research projects draw upon interdisciplinary frameworks that examine early childhood development, parenting, and families; father engagement in urban settings; social factors affecting health and education; children of incarcerated parents; and intergenerational learning within African American and Latino families. Her study with youth, Youth Civic Engagement Research (YCER), engages young people in using research to promote community change.
She 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. Dr. Gadsden collaborates with Penn colleagues across schools to examine issues of health and educational disparities among children, families, and communities.
She has published widely across academic disciplines and fields. Her published works include books and articles on early childhood research; literacy and African American youth; incarcerated parents in the lives of children, families, and communities; and risk, equity, and schooling.
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Journal Editorial Boards
Review of Research in Education
Co-Editor-in-Chief, 2023 and 2025
Literacy Research: Theory, Method, and Practice
Editorial Board