Professor Dickinson's interest in early literacy development springs from a convergence between intellectual interest in the development of literacy, especially the role of language in the emergence of literacy, and personal desire to help teachers of young children better support the early literacy development of children from low-income homes. For five years he worked with elementary school-aged children in the Philadelphia area, with four of these years being in public schools that served low-income communities. Returning to school, he attended Harvard's Graduate School of Education, specializing in language and cognitive development. In the early 1980's he began focusing on language and early literacy development among low-income populations.

His work has moved between the theoretical and applied realms. He has studied the emergence of early literacy, examined the impact of preschool classrooms on children's language and literacy development, helped to create tools for describing literacy support in preschool classrooms, and led a team that created and studied approaches to providing professional development to preschool teachers.

Recently, Professor Dickinson co-authored a comprehensive preschool curriculum for teachers of four-year-old children (Opening the World of Learning - OWL) that is being nationally distributed. Due to the considerable interest in early literacy, he has served on numerous advisory boards and spoken to many gatherings of teachers and educational leaders. Currently he continues to study approaches to helping preschool better foster children's language development and studying the effects of combining a strong content-rich curriculum with professional development designed to help teachers support children's language growth.

Professor Dickinson is interested in the home and classroom factors that support children's acquisition of language and literacy abilities. His work addresses both basic questions about the role of language in literacy and in practical questions about strategies for improving the literacy-learning opportunities of children. Basic research questions that he studies relate to the role of language development in the consolidation of young children's linguistic, cognitive, and social abilities in fostering literacy growth. Professor Dickinson's applied interests include efforts to identify strategies that result in enhanced learning and in work developing techniques and systems for delivering materials and professional development to teachers that are effective and cost effective.