Rebecca Cooper Geller is an Assistant Professor of Social Studies Education in the Mary Frances Early College of Education at the University of Georgia (Go Dawgs). She was previously an Assistant Professor of Secondary Social Studies Education at the University of Wyoming. She obtained her Ph.D. in Education with a focus on Urban Schooling at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) and her Bachelor of Arts degree with distinction in Comparative History of Ideas with a minor in Law, Societies, and Justice at the University of Washington (Go Dawgs) as a member of Phi Beta Kappa. After her studies at UW, she became a classroom teacher in an Oakland, California public charter school, where she taught for six years at both the elementary and middle school levels.
Rebecca’s scholarship focuses on critical social studies and civic education, research-practice partnerships, and supporting teachers to build classrooms that are democratic and humanizing for marginalized youth. She has worked on such diverse projects as creating the Mann UCLA Community School in South Los Angeles, consulting with the American Civil Liberties Union, the Institute for Democracy, Education, and Access, and advising the University of Wyoming’s Malcolm Wallop Civic Engagement K-12 Curriculum Project. Her research has been published in Teachers College Record, Social Education, and Theory & Research in Social Education.
Rebecca’s current research project uses mixed-reality simulation technology to support teacher learning in facilitating controversial issue discussions. Her dissertation explored how high school social studies teachers in a national data set made sense of classroom deliberation and discussion of controversial issues in our contentious, polarized political climate.
My reading queue:
South to America: A Journey Below the Mason-Dixon to Understand the Soul of a Nation, Imani Perry