Timothy Shanahan (educator)

Shanahan previously served as Director of Reading for the Chicago Public Schools under Chief Executive Officer Arne Duncan.

Upon completing his PhD, he became an assistant professor in the reading education program at what was then the University of Illinois at Chicago Circle.

He also was director of UIC's Reading, Writing, and Literacy programs (1989-2001), and was chair of the Department of Curriculum and Instruction (2011-2013).

In 2009, he was honored as UIC's Researcher of the Year (Social Sciences) and was awarded the distinguished professor designation in 2012.

The impact of reading on writing is obvious, since writers use the letters, punctuation, grammatical constructions, and discourse organization with which readers would necessarily be familiar.

However, empirical study of these relations was sporadic, simple (usually examining only two variables), and were not particularly influential of theory or practice.

These early studies have been widely cited,[8] and have been replicated and extended with students with learning disabilities [9] and internationally.

Shanahan’s work on reading-writing relationships conceptualized the connections as being multivariate and developmental (changing in nature as students progressed).

The readers try to use context to replace the missing words and their reading ability or the difficulty of the texts is then inferred from these responses.

These studies compare the approaches to reading used by mathematicians, historians, and chemists, and explore how these specialized uses of literacy could be taught in secondary schools.

This work became the basis of the disciplinary literacy standards included in the Common Core State Standards, which have been adopted by more than 40 U.S. states; additionally, several other countries and international organizations are supporting research and practice in disciplinary literacy, explicitly based on the Shanahan’s work.

The suit claimed that the state was failing to ensure that the plaintiffs were receiving the required pediatric care and services.

District Judge Joan Lefkow cited his opinion in ordering that the state employ communications specialists capable of producing easier to understand notices and that parents be told, not just informed in writing, of the services available.