“Wrestling With the Politics and Ideology”: Teacher Educators’ Responses to Dyslexia Discourse and Legislation

Abstract

Since 1985, when Texas passed the first dyslexia law, there has been a profusion of dyslexia legislation across the country, with a rapid increase in recent years. Including Texas, which has multiple laws, 42 states have passed dyslexia legislation focused on identification, intervention, accommodations, funding, and/or dyslexia specialists. Seven states, including Texas, require or “encourage” teacher preparation programs to address state-approved information about identification and intervention, even though the concept is not well understood or defined. Teacher educators are frequently criticized for not preparing teachers to address dyslexia, yet their perspectives are not represented in the conversation. To address this gap, we interviewed literacy teacher educators about their perspectives of reading challenges, dyslexia, and legislation that requires them to teach about dyslexia. We analyzed the data employing authoritative discourse and disability critical race studies (DisCrit) as theoretical frameworks. This article presents portraits of three teacher educators that represent a range of participant perspectives.

Keywords

dyslexia teacher educators authoritative discourse DisCrit

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