Rebecca D. Silverman

Rebecca D. Silverman is the Judy Koch Professor of Education at the Stanford Graduate School of Education, where she focuses on language and literacy development in early childhood and elementary school. She conducts research on how language comprehension supports reading development, including vocabulary, listening comprehension, and reading comprehension, and often uses mixed-methods approaches and studies the role of educational technology in supporting the literacy development of diverse learners. She serves as a literacy expert for the Children Discovering Their World curriculum and has held editorial and professional leadership roles, including Editor in Chief of The Elementary School Journal and service on the board of the International Literacy Association.

Silverman earned her master’s and doctoral degrees in language and literacy from the Harvard Graduate School of Education. She is the editor of Language and Literacy Beyond Decoding: Evidence-Based Instruction in Grades PreK–6, co-edited with Kristin Keane, which presents research-based strategies for building language comprehension and reading comprehension in PreK–6 classrooms. Her scholarship includes the widely cited article “Beyond decoding: A meta-analysis of the effects of language comprehension interventions on K–5 students’ language and literacy outcomes” in Reading Research Quarterly.