Philip Andrew Fisher

Philip Andrew Fisher

Professor
Assistant: Barbara Gunderson
Office: ANKO 322

Biography

Dr. Philip Fisher is the Diana Chen Professor of Early Childhood Learning in the Graduate School of Education and the Director of the Stanford Center on Early Childhood. His research, focuses on developing and evaluating scalable early childhood interventions in communities, and on translating scientific knowledge regarding healthy development under conditions of adversity for use in social policy and programs. He is particularly interested in the effects of early stressful experiences on children's development, and in prevention and treatment programs for improving children's functioning in areas such as relationships with caregivers and peers, social-emotional development, and academic achievement. He is currently the lead investigator in the ongoing RAPID-EC project, a national survey on the well-being of households with young children during the COVID-19 pandemic. Dr. Fisher is the developer of a number of widely implemented evidence-based interventions for supporting healthy child development in the context of social and economic adversity, including Treatment Foster Care Oregon for Preschoolers (TFCO-P) and Kids in Transition to School (KITS). Most recently, he developed the Filming Interactions to Nurture Development (FIND) video coaching program for supporting parenting in the home environment and early childhood care and education professionals in childcare and preschool contexts. He has published over 250 scientific papers in peer reviewed journals. He is the recipient of the 2012 Society for Prevention Research Translational Science Award, and a 2019 Fellow of the American Psychological Society.

Other titles

Program affiliations

DAPS
Race, Inequality, and Language in Education (RILE)
(MS) EDS
Stanford Accelerator for Learning

Research interests

Brain and Learning Sciences | Child Development | Early Childhood | Leadership and Organization | Parents and Family Issues | Poverty and Inequality | Professional Development | Psychology | Social and Emotional Learning

Recent publications

Ibekwe-Okafor, N., Sims, J., Liu, S., Hernandez, K., Curenton, S. M., Yoon, I., & Fisher, P. A. (2025). Beyond Direct Exposure: The Vicarious Nature of Racism on Children's Development. JOURNAL OF RACIAL AND ETHNIC HEALTH DISPARITIES.
Liu, S., Smith, J. M., Phillips, D., & Fisher, P. A. (2025). Child care providers' emotional distress links stressors to turnover intention: implications for rebuilding a healthy workforce. CHILDREN AND YOUTH SERVICES REVIEW, 178.
Smith, J. M., Li, S., Quick, K., & Fisher, P. (2025). Parenting stress among Latine mothers during the pandemic predicts children's emotional distress. JOURNAL OF APPLIED DEVELOPMENTAL PSYCHOLOGY, 101.

Philip Fisher in the News & Media

Data from the RAPID Survey Project at the Stanford Center on Early Childhood finds that more than half of child care providers surveyed experienced hunger in June 2025 — one of the highest percentages the organization has seen since it began collecting data during the COVID-19 pandemic.