Louise Spear-Swerling, Ph.D.

Louise is Professor Emerita in the Department of Special Education at Southern Connecticut State University in New Haven CT. She received her Ph.D. in cognitive psychology from Yale University in 1989. Her primary research interests involve children’s literacy development across the K-to-12 grade span; common types of literacy difficulties; and how to prepare teachers to teach reading effectively, especially to at-risk and struggling students. She has written numerous peer-reviewed journal articles and book chapters on these topics. She is also the author of The power of RTI and reading profiles: A blueprint for solving reading problems (2015) and the editor of Structured Literacy interventions: Teaching students with reading difficulties, K-6 (2022), as well as the author of a forthcoming book on using Structured Literacy approaches to help students with different profiles of reading difficulties. For many years she prepared both general and special educators to teach reading, including supervising a tutoring program that paired preservice teacher candidates with elementary students who were struggling in reading. Dr. Spear-Swerling served on the International Dyslexia Association committee that produced the Knowledge and Practice Standards for Teachers of Reading. Her policy work has included several key educational initiatives in Connecticut. She helped to draft the state’s response-to-intervention guidelines as well as its current guidelines on identification of learning disabilities. She consults widely for school districts in Connecticut, mostly on cases involving students with severe or persistent difficulties in reading and ways to improve their achievement.