Expert Secondary Content-Area Teachers’ Pedagogical Schemas for Teaching Literacy to Students With Learning Disabilities

Secondary content-area teachers seldom use research-based practices for students with learning disabilities (LD), and prior research indicates they often conceptualize instruction in ways that align poorly with research about effective instruction for students with LD. However, prior research has focused on typical secondary content-area teachers, and we know little about how expert secondary content-area teachers think about instruction for students with LD. We used hermeneutic phenomenological methods to explore expert content-area teachers’ pedagogical schemas for teaching literacy to secondary students with LD. We found teachers’ pedagogical schemas were shaped by their goals for students and the role they believed learning difficulties played in achieving those goals. This led them to integrate literacy and disciplinary instruction to support students’ learning. The findings extend and support existing research on teachers’ expertise, and have implications for future efforts to develop secondary content-area teachers’ expertise in teaching students with LD.