Susan De La Paz

Susan De La Paz is an associate professor of Special Education at the University of Maryland. She has spent more than 15 years creating and validating writing curricula, first in English classes, and more recently within the discipline of history, helping teachers meet the needs of students with LD, struggling learners, and proficient and advanced learners in middle and high school classrooms. Her work employs cognitive apprenticeships to support adolescents’ disciplinary thinking and as a vehicle for supporting inservice and preservice teachers. She won a Teaching American History Grant and led a Struggling Readers and Writers Grant from the Institute of Education Sciences, and has received funding from the American Educational Research Association. Her recent scholarship appears in Written Communication, Journal of Literacy Research, Theory and Research in Social Education, Learning Disabilities, Research & Practice, Journal of Research on Technology in Education, Contemporary Educational Psychology, and the Journal of Learning Disabilities, as well as the Journal of Educational Psychology, Intervention in School and Clinic, and Exceptional Children, among others. She has also written numerous book chapters on writing and disciplinary literacy. She can be contacted at sdelapaz@umd.edu