Teacher expertise can have a large influence on student experiences and achievement. The purpose of this study was to explore the experiences, practices, and beliefs of early elementary classroom teachers who have supplementary literacy certification. Although characteristics of effective literacy teachers have been identified in previous…

South Carolina's Read to Succeed Law (RTS) is different than the other 15 states' literacy-based third grade retention laws. It mandates literacy intervention training for in-service and pre-service teachers. Research indicates academic gains from retention are short-lived, diminishing over time and increasing drop-out rates. Through a statewide…

In this article, we explore how members of a teacher conversation group, focused on primary students' learning, circulated and instantiated a cultural model of what teaching for literacy meant and how young children learned. We show how, over time, particular discourses around literacy as a quantifiable and measurable skill populated teachers',…