This action research study focused on establishing a professional learning community of secondary special educators to explore authentic meaning-based reading experiences with struggling readers. The term meaning-based reading experience encompasses both holistic reading evaluations in the form of miscue analysis, and more meaning-focused strategy methods using Retrospective Miscue Analysis, and corpus linguistics applications. My goals were to examine teacher views of struggling readers, the influence these meaning-based reading experiences had on struggling readers literacy profiles, and the role professional development had in influencing teacher perspectives regarding literacy learning and learning disabilities. This study provided a rich description regarding one special educators views of struggling readers, the reading process, and learning disabilities. Teacher study group sessions were used as opportunities to facilitate learning of each meaning-based reading experience, review teacher experiences in implementing these methodologies with their students, and for reflection. Data collection consisted of pre and post study interviews, recorded study group sessions, field notes, and digital profiles consisting of Burke Reading Inventories, Classroom Procedures (Y. Goodman et al.,2005), Retrospective Miscue Analysis sessions, and corpus linguistics work samples. Findings from the analysis of teacher study group sessions, interviews, and student work samples show that participants learned to revalue struggling readers, the reading process, literacy learning, and disability labels using meaning-based reading experiences. Implications for this study conclude that meaning-based reading experiences can serve in reframing deficit perspectives for other struggling readers when teachers are provided with specific professional development opportunities. [The dissertation citations contained here are published with the permission of ProQuest LLC. Further reproduction is prohibited without permission. Copies of dissertations may be obtained by Telephone (800) 1-800-521-0600. Web page: http://www.proquest.com/en-US/products/dissertations/individuals.shtml.]