Rebecca D. Silverman is the Judy Koch Professor at the Stanford Graduate School of Education. She is an affiliate of the Stanford Center on Early Childhood. She began her career in education as an elementary school teacher in her hometown of New Orleans, Louisiana. Passionate about supporting children’s literacy development, she earned her master’s and doctoral degrees in language and literacy from the Harvard Graduate School of Education and is now a leading researcher and teacher educator in the field.

Dr. Silverman’s research focuses on language and literacy development in early childhood and elementary school. Her work has contributed to the research base on using read alouds, multimedia, cross-age peer learning, and small group dialogic instruction to support the vocabulary development and reading comprehension of diverse learners. Dr. Silverman leads the Language to Literacy Research Lab (https://langlitlab.stanford.edu/) and is engaged in research-practice partnerships in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Dr. Silverman’s teaching focuses on bridging research and practice. She has taught pre-service general and special education teachers at the undergraduate and graduate levels; she has led professional development on research-based practices for supporting language and literacy for in-service early childhood and elementary school educators; and she has mentored numerous doctoral students who will serve as the next generation of researchers and teacher educators. She has also taught internationally, having been a Fulbright Scholar in Myanmar.

Dr. Sillverman has been active in service to the field. She has been on the Editorial Board of such journals as Reading Research Quarterly and The Reading Teacher, and she currently serves as the Editor-in-Chief of the Elementary School Journal (https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/journals/esj/about). She also currently serves on the Board of Directors for the International Literacy Association (https://www.literacyworldwide.org/about-us/our-leadership). She is an advisor for such organizations as Sesame Workshop and the Public Broadcasting Service, and she participates in working groups for the California State Board of Education and the UCSF Dyslexia Center.