Culture and biology in learning disabilities research: Legacies and possible futures

The chapter provides a critical overview of research on learning disabilities (LD) with an eye on the intersections of biology and culture and offer reflections for interdisciplinary research. The LD is also considered a secondary condition—i.e., comorbid to other developmental disorders (e.g., attention deficit disorder, emotional disorders). The LD represented a less stigmatizingcategory than intellectual disabilities, which had been historically associated with poverty and minoritized groups, particularly African Americans. Traditional reading instruction for students with LDs tends to frame learning as individual learners’ performancein discrete literacy tasks such as early reading skills (e.g., decoding). However, LD research has also been conducted on reading comprehension, mathematics and writing. The insights from this review open crucial opportunities to reframe very nature of LD from bio-cultural perspective. The multifaceted portraits of LD students that emerge from this standpoint compel researchers to produce situated representations of these learners, with close attention to contingencies of context and local goals.