Studies by Moats (1995), Mather, Bos, and Babur (2001), and McCutchen, et al (2002) have begun to identify the relationship between teachers' linguistic knowledge and what is known, scientifically, about how literacy is acquired by learners. Findings from these studies support the idea that linguistic knowledge--particularly knowledge of English phonology and orthography--is important for teachers of reading and can improve student outcomes in the early elementary grades. Moats (1995) and Mather et al (2001) found that teacher participants in their studies did not have the levels of linguistic knowledge that would enable expert teaching of reading. The present study takes the research on teachers' linguistic knowledge as its thematic source and examines how linguistic knowledge enhances teachers' thinking about early literacy. Three groups of first-grade teachers participated in the present study. The first two groups were recruited from organizations that offer training in multisensory methods of teaching reading such as the Orton-Gillingham, Spalding, or Wilson methods. Multisensory (MS) methods of reading instruction involve teaching students to use more than one sense to internalize the relationships between phonemes and the letters that represent them in print. Training courses for teachers generally involve a thorough analysis of English orthography as well as practice and feedback in use of the teaching methods. This study compared three groups of teachers: teachers who had received recent multisensory training (n = 8), teachers who had received multisensory training more than one year ago (n = 8), and teachers who had not been trained in multisensory methods (n = 8). Participants responded to surveys that measured their level of linguistic knowledge, familiarity with popular children's literature, and their theoretical orientation toward the teaching of reading. They also watched two segments of a video, each featuring a child reading aloud with a teacher. For each segment, teachers responded to six prompts that were designed to tap their on-task thinking about beginning reading acquisition and instruction. While the three groups of teachers in this study did not differ significantly in their measured levels of linguistic knowledge, they did differ in the ways in which they responded to the video and prompts. Multisensory trained teachers made more specific comments about the readers in the video and suggested more teaching strategies in their responses to the prompts. Multisensory trained teachers also showed higher levels of approval for basic skills practices, and used specific information about the readers in the video to formulate teaching strategies. Implications for future research on the teaching of reading are discussed. [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.]