Margaret E. King-Sears

Margaret E. King-Sears, Ph.D., is a professor in the Division of Special Education and disAbility Research at George Mason University in Fairfax, VA. Previously, she was a professor at Johns Hopkins University, where she began conducting self-management research with elementary and secondary students and their teachers. Her focus is on teaching students with and without disabilities how to self-manage their behaviors so they can be independent in social and academic areas. She works with teachers to co-construct students’ self-management instruction.

Her work also encompasses how teachers design and deliver effective instruction responsive to their students’ diversity. To that end, universal design for learning (UDL) is also a research interest. She guest edited a special issue on UDL in Learning Disability Quarterly; she is guest editor for an upcoming issue on UDL in Remedial and Special Education. She is on the editorial board for both journals as well as other international and national journals.

Co-teaching is an additional research area. Her emphasis is on ensuring support co-teachers are active as well as that students with and without disabilities benefit from instruction. Some of her research features students’ voices about co-teaching.  

Previously, she taught elementary and secondary students with disabilities in elementary and secondary settings in Jacksonville, FL as well as the Department of Defense Dependents Schools (Schweinfurt, Germany, and Okinawa, Japan). She is also a Past President of the Council for Learning Disabilities, and she remains active in several professional organizations.