This article reviews three studies that provide evidence that students with learning disabilities (LD) display optimistic academic self-beliefs, even in the face of relatively poor academic performance. In the first study, a quantitative approach was used to explore the spelling and writing self-efficacy of 133 adolescents with and without LD.…

This study uses systemic functional linguistics and the related critical discourse analysis to examine intertextual links between four eighth-grade students' talk in informal conversations as they generated ideas for the characters of their narrative writing. Data sources included classroom observations, students' drafts and polished writing,…