One contemporary tension in literacy instruction centers on if teachers should employ a skills-based or a social practices approach to teach special education students reading and writing. Prior research has demonstrated that there are affordances and limitations to each of these approaches (Purcell-Gates et al., 2004; Street, 2013). The purpose of this dissertation is to engage special education scholars and teachers in considering how explicit literacy instruction might incorporate skills and strategies as well as the social practices in which these are situated. I suggest one potential avenue for blending these approaches is for special education teachers to (re)construct knowledge of their special education students' family literacy practices so that they can enact literacy instruction that supports students to draw on their full repertoires of literacy practices. In this dissertation, I used a case study design (Yin, 2014) to examine how one novice special education teacher enacted teaching practices around her (re)constructed professional knowledge of her special education students' family literacy practices. To inform the study's methods and analysis, I applied sociocultural and social-constructivist theories of literacy, teacher knowledge, and teaching practices. Data sources included semi-structured interviews, classroom observations, analysis of documents, a demographics and perception questionnaire, and a situational judgment test. To analyze the data, I employed inductive and deductive coding and discourse analysis. Findings indicate potential intersections between teachers' (re)constructed knowledge of their special education students' family literacy practices and enacted teaching practices that incorporate family literacy practices. Additionally, teachers can use conversations as sites for developing knowledge of students' family literacy practices. During literacy instruction, teachers can use questioning to draw in striving students' family literacy practices. Ultimately, I argue that special education teachers can (re)construct their knowledge and literacy teaching practices to blend explicit skills and strategy instruction with opportunities for special education students to leverage their family literacy practices.
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