Research interests: Social contexts of motivation, collaborative and cooperative learning, and academic resilience.

Teaching specialty areas: Human learning, motivation, research methods.

Jessica Summers (Ph.D., University of Texas at Austin, 2002) is an assistant professor in the Department of Educational Psychology at the University of Arizona. She previously served on the faculty of the University of Missouri-Columbia. Summers' scholarship focuses on understanding the role of motivation and social relationships in learning and achievement, specifically how social context (as both processes and phenonmena) affects students' motivation to learn, and how this contributes to students' overall success as learners. She currently serves on the editorial boards of Contemporary Educational Psychology, The Elementary School Journal, the Journal of Experimental Education, and the American Educational Research Journal.