P. David Pearson is an emeritus faculty member in the School of Education at the University of California, Berkeley, where he served as Dean from 2001-2010. His current research focuses on literacy history and policy. He also holds an appointment as a Professor of the Graduate School and is the Evelyn Lois Corey Emeritus Chair in Instructional Science.

He has been active in professional organizations, serving the International Reading Association (IRA) and the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) in many capacities (including the IRA Board of Directors), both the National Reading Conference (NRC) and The National Conference of Research in English as President, and the American Association of Colleges of Teacher Education as a member of the Board. He currently serves as the Chair of IRA’s Literacy Research Panel.

He has served as an advisor to the National Academy of Science, the Children's Television Workshop (now the Sesame Workshop), a myriad of school districts and state agencies, and many educational public and private educational enterprises. He has been a reading program author for several publishers, including Ginn & Co. (Ginn Reading Program), Silver Burdett & Ginn (World of Reading and Literature Works), National Geographic (Reading/Writing Workshop), and Pearson Scott-Foresman (Reading Street).