Rate My Professor Richard Anderson

Richard C. Anderson is a distinguished Professor Emeritus of Educational Psychology and Psychology at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He received his A.B. cum laude in American History in 1956, A.M.T. in Social Science Education in 1957, and Ed.D. in Educational Psychology in 1960, all from Harvard University. Beginning his professional career as a teacher at Concord High School and Peter Bulkley Junior High School in Massachusetts from 1956 to 1959, and later as Assistant Superintendent of Schools in East Brunswick, New Jersey from 1960 to 1963, Anderson joined the University of Illinois in 1963 as Assistant Professor of Education. He was promoted to Associate Professor in 1965 and to Professor of Education and Psychology in 1967, a position held until 2010. He directed the Training Research Laboratory from 1967 to 1973, the Laboratory for Cognitive Studies in Education from 1973 to 1976, and has served as Director of the Center for the Study of Reading since 1976.

Anderson's academic interests center on the psychology of reading and literacy, including intellectually stimulating classroom discussions that foster children's reasoning, critical thinking, social, emotional, and cognitive development; comparative studies on phonological and morphological awareness in learning to read alphabetic and non-alphabetic languages like Chinese; visual-orthographic representations of characters; vocabulary growth; and communicative competence in second language acquisition. He has published over 185 books and articles. Major works include co-authoring Becoming a Nation of Readers: The Report of the Commission on Reading (1985) with Emily H. Hiebert, Judith A. Scott, and Ian A. G. Wilkinson; Educational Psychology: The Science of Instruction and Learning (1973) with Gerald W. Faust; Schooling and the Acquisition of Knowledge (1977, edited with Robert J. Spiro and William E. Montague); and the chapter "A schema-theoretic view of basic processes in reading comprehension" (1984) in the Handbook of Reading Research.

Anderson's profound influence is reflected in prestigious honors such as election to the National Academy of Education in 1979, presidency of the American Educational Research Association in 1983, the Edward L. Thorndike Award from the American Psychological Association in 1997, the Distinguished Contributions to Educational Research Award from AERA in 1994, the Oscar O. Causey Award from the Literacy Research Association in 1987, and two Palmer O. Johnson Awards from AERA in 1972 and 1977. He has held visiting professorships at Beijing Normal University (2003-2010), Hong Kong Polytechnic University (2004-2007), and as University Chair Professor at National Taiwan Normal University (2012-2014).