This paper describes a research and development center's project to design procedures for helping students both to develop and to apply effective behaviors for understanding text. The project's developmental efforts are summarized and promising directions for future work are examined. Specifically, the paper (1) clarifies the goals of the project, (2) describes an instructional technique that is being developed to pursue the overall goal, (3) presents the results and implications of two pilot studies, (4) examines selected literature for additional direction, and (5) discusses possible next steps for refining the technique that is being developed. (Author/FL)