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Founded in 2016, the Tennessee Education Research Alliance (TERA) brought together leaders from Vanderbilt Peabody College of education and human development and the Tennessee Department of Education to launch one of the first state-level research-practice partnerships aimed at informing education policy and practice. Through TERA, researchers… Read More

The Peabody lawn has hosted many events—from farm-to-table dinners and outdoor classrooms to Peabody’s graduate student Commencement each spring. A regular-season volleyball match, however, had never graced the iconic mall. At least, not until Aug. 29, when Vanderbilt’s reignited volleyball program recorded its first win in its home opener. Read More

Jason Vadnos An increasingly globalized world needs young leaders who can bridge divides and help solve humanity’s biggest challenges. This year, Jason Vadnos, a third-year student in the Department of Human and Organizational Development (HOD) at Vanderbilt Peabody College was named a 2025-2027 recipient of the… Read More

Salvatore Falletta (submitted photo) Warren Lowell (Vanderbilt University) Amy Owen Michelle Perdomo Douglas Ribeiro (Vanderbilt University) Jonathan Seiden… Read More

By Jennifer Kiilerich In a game-changing partnership, Vanderbilt Peabody College of education and human development and the YMCA of Middle Tennessee are proving that effective reading interventions can come in all shapes—and ages. Reading Buddies is a peer-to-peer tutoring initiative spearheaded by Peabody researcher Jeanne Wanzek and Elizabeth… Read More

Andrew Nalani Andrew Nalani, assistant professor of human and organizational development, has joined the Bezos Family Foundation as an inaugural scholar of the Jackie Bezos Researcher in Residence program. Nalani began the one-year residency program on August 18, taking a leave of absence from his faculty position… Read More

By Jenna Somers In September, a delegation from Pakistan visited Vanderbilt University for the weeklong STEM-Powered Immersion Conference, hosted by Peabody College of education and human development. Six faculty members from Sukkur IBA University and Qasim Aslam, founder and chief executive officer of Beyond the Classroom, participated in a… Read More

By Jenna Somers   Families interested in enrolling their children in this study should contact the research team at vuhandsonplaylab@gmail.com or (615) 343-1079. Down syndrome, the most common chromosomal cause of cognitive disability, affects approximately one in 700 live births. Scientists have known the genetic etiology of Down syndrome for… Read More

By Jenna Somers About a quarter to a third of students with mathematics learning disabilities do not show adequate improvement after receiving skills-based math interventions. A new study will test the effects of combining a mathematics intervention and working memory training on the math learning of first-grade children with… Read More

Key Takeaways:  Vanderbilt Peabody College will co-host the Global Education Deans’ Forum October 21 – 24 in Nashville.  The event will be co-hosted by Florida State University and the University of Kansas.  Leaders of education faculties from more than 30 colleges and universities… Read More

By Jennifer Kiilerich Grace Ambrose-Zaken, Pediatric Belt Cane inventor. It was a little bit of kismet that led Vanderbilt Peabody College alumna Grace Ambrose-Zaken, Ed.D.’97, to the visual disabilities field. But it was a lot of passion and creativity that drove her to transform that field with… Read More

Policies adopted by states drive major differences in the resources available to families.   The first three years of life are critical for healthy development, yet families in some states have more than twice the resources of those in others—a gap created by state policy choices. Consider a single mother… Read More

Social innovation reimagines organizations and systems through human-centered design principles and through leadership to create evenhanded, sustainable solutions to pressing challenges. Considered an emerging field within the past two decades, social innovation is one that Vanderbilt Peabody College of education and human development has been at the forefront of… Read More

By Jennifer Kiilerich and Krystal Schmidt If you are an educator—or work with educators—then it’s likely you have encountered Section 504 plans. These plans support more than 1.3 million students with disabilities across the country, but they differ from Individualized Education Plans, or IEPs.  In the… Read More

Vanderbilt Peabody’s Emily Pendergrass has been named to the new global cohort “Empowering Teachers: 21st Century Skills.” The University of Jordan, in Amman, recently assembled the research team, which aims to boost teachers’ professional development in an age of evolving technologies and rapidly… Read More

By Jennifer Kiilerich Generative AI is ubiquitous these days, but its use tends to raise as many questions—from practical to ethical—as it answers. A Vanderbilt website launched this spring, the Peabody Hub for Mindful AI Innovation, provides a space for users to take a breath and… Read More

By Jenna Somers Whether a young child lives in Guatemala or the Netherlands, whether they attend school in a mudbrick building with dirt floors or a state-of-the-art facility, is it possible to develop common measures to understand their health and development? How does child development differ across cultural contexts, and… Read More

By Jenna Somers After a hard day of work, a parent reading a bedtime story to their child might feel too tired and stressed to think of questions that could spark insightful conversations about the story with their child. But these conversations—which scholars call dialogic reading—are critical to literacy development. Read More

By Jenna Somers The Great Recession of 2008 led to a pronounced decline in birthrates, and the impact has caught up with colleges and universities. Children born at the start of the recession are now 18 years old, but there are fewer of them compared to the prior decade,… Read More