Deborah Bieler is the coordinator of the English Education program at the University of Delaware and the founder of the English Education program's partnership with Howard High School of Technology in Wilmington, DE. She is a former high school English teacher and writing center director whose scholarship, teaching, and activism focus on the preparation and retention of equity-oriented, antiracist secondary English teachers.

She is the author of The Power of Teacher Talk: Promoting Equity and Retention Through Student Interactions (Teachers College Press, 2019), which received the 2020 Exemplary Research in Teaching and Teacher Education Award from the American Educational Research Association (AERA), Division K.

Her work has also appeared in journals such as English Education, English Journal, Teachers College Record, Teacher Education Quarterly, and The New Educator as well as in chapters in Engaging the Critical in English Education: Approaches from the Commission on Social Justice in Teacher Education; Unsettling Education: Searching for Ethical Footing in a Time of Reform;  Innovations in Pre-Service English Language Arts Teacher Education; and Diversifying the Teacher Workforce: Preparing and Retaining Highly Effective Teachers.

She has received the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE)'s Promising Researcher Award and the English Language Arts Teacher Educators (ELATE – formerly CEE, Conference on English Education) Research Initiative Award. She is also the recipient of the College of Arts and Sciences Outstanding Teaching Award, the University of Delaware Excellence in Advising Award, and the University of Delaware's E.A. Trabant Award for Women's Equity Award.

Her current research projects include TEND: Teacher Equity Network Delaware, which examines what local equity-oriented, antiracist public and charter school teachers identify as opportunities for and challenges to positive change in the current educational landscape, and LARE: The Language of Anti-Racist Educators, which explores how anti-racist educators use language successfully to effect change in their schools.