Jean Schumaker

Jean Schumaker has spent the past 45 years studying the problems of adolescents and developing educational interventions for them. Along with Dr. Donald Deshler and other colleagues at the Center for Research on Learning, she has developed the Strategic Instruction Model, a comprehensive program for students with learning disabilities. Her most recent work in this area focuses on computerized instruction in learning strategies for students.

Another line of programmatic research that Dr. Schumaker has pursued since 1972 concerns social skills performance and instruction. Her research studies in this area have described the social skills of several populations of at-risk youths and have reported the development and validation of instructional procedures for social skills. Her current work in this area focuses on the instructional procedures for social skills in inclusive classrooms in which students with disabilities are enrolled.

Dr. Schumaker has been the Principal Investigator for more than $30 million of funded research and development projects, and she has administered more than $99 million in grant funds. She is an author of the following: the Learning Strategies Curriculum, a curriculum comprised of fifteen teacher's manuals for teaching students learning strategies; Social Skills for Daily Living, ASSET, the Community Building Series, and the Cooperative Strategies Series, four social skills curricula; ten instructor’s manuals in the Content Enhancement Series, a series developed to improve the delivery of content in mainstream classrooms; and numerous articles and chapters.