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…

A Substantial body of research on "struggling" or "at-risk" readers has mostly focused on identifying children and developing and testing interventions aimed at remediating children's perceived deficiencies. Research has generally assumed that a reading (dis)ability is an intrinsic and hereditary condition that children embody.…

AN EXPERIMENTAL GROUP OF 18 FIRST-GRADE TEACHERS FROM FIVE SCHOOLS WAS RELEASED 1/2 DAY TWICE EACH MONTH FOR A SERIES OF DISCUSSION MEETINGS WITH THE READING CONSULTANT. A CONTROL GROUP OF 17 FIRST-GRADE TEACHERS FROM THE OTHER FIVE SCHOOLS IN THE SAME DISTRICT WAS EXPOSED TO THE TYPICAL CONSULTANT SITUATION -- HELP GIVEN AT THE REQUEST OF THE…

A practicum was designed to improve the literacy instruction of first-grade students by increasing the first grade teachers' and reading specialists' understandings of current research and theory. A graduate-level 3-hour course was developed and adopted by a local state university to assist teachers in understanding and utilizing the most current…