Donna Scanlon
Dr. Donna Scanlon is known for her work in support of children who experience substantial difficulty in learning to read and on how to prevent and remediate reading difficulties. In particular, she and her colleagues developed an approach to early literacy instruction and intervention known as the Interactive Strategies Approach (ISA). The ISA has been found to be effective in helping teachers to reduce the incidence of reading difficulties in the early primary grades, and is used in Response to Intervention (RTI) contexts. The ISA-RTI Professional Development Project uses distance learning technologies to offer extended, job-embedded professional development for teachers. Donna and her colleagues also extended the use of ISA for use with older readers. They worked with a group of teacher educators to create a set of ISA-based instructional resources for use in their undergraduate and graduate literacy methods courses with the goal of enhancing new and in-service teachers' ability to understand and address the needs of beginning and struggling literacy learners. With colleagues she authored Early Literacy Instruction and Intervention, which was recently published by Guilford. She is also the coauthor of Comprehensive Reading Intervention in Grades 3-8: Fostering Word Learning, Comprehension, and Motivation, and Argument Writing as a Supplemental Literacy Intervention for At-Risk Youth. With several colleagues, her work has appeared in Reading Research Quarterly, Literacy Research: Theory, Method, and Practice, Journal of Learning Disabilities, The Reading Teacher , Reading & Writing, Journal of Educational Psychology, Reading Today (now Literacy Today), and Contemporary Educational Psychology. Dr. Scanlon recently authored a freely available booklet entitled, Helping Your Child Become a Reader, and co authored a position paper titled An Examination of Dyslexia Research and Instruction, with Policy Implications, with Classroom Caffeine guest Peter Johnston. Both resources are linked in the show notes. Most of Dr. Scanlon’s research was supported by grants from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development and the United States Department of Education through the Institute of Education Sciences (IES) and the Fund for the Improvement of Post-Secondary Education (FIPSE). Dr. Scanlon was a member of the International Reading Association's RtI Task Force and is a 2017 inductee into the Reading Hall of Fame. Dr. Scanlon is Professor Emeritus at University at Albany State University of New York’s Department of Literacy Teaching and Learning and was affiliated with the University’s Child Research and Study Center for more than forty years, serving as associate director and director at different points in time.
Scanlon, D., Anderson, K.L., Barnes, E.M., Morse, M., & Yurkewecz-Stellato, T. (2024). Helping Your Child Become a Reader. ISA Professional Development. https://literacyresearchcommons.org/resources/
Johnston, P., & Scanlon, D. (2021). An Examination of Dyslexia Research and Instruction With Policy Implications. Literacy Research: Theory, Method, and Practice, 70(1), 107-128. https://doi.org/10.1177/23813377211024625 https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/23813377211024625
To cite this episode: Persohn, L. (Host). (2025, Jan. 14). Another conversation with Donna Scanlon (Season 5, No. 6) [Audio podcast episode]. In Classroom Caffeine Podcast series. https://www.classroomcaffeine.com/guests. DOI: 10.5240/2653-2E1C-A3DB-0EB7-F157-Q