A study outlined the processes through which two beginning elementary teachers in the San Francisco Bay area learned to overcome institutional constraints which tended to standardize ethnically diverse students' responses to literature. The study focused specifically on the changes in one teacher's instruction which freed her third/fourth grade children's literature responses to match more closely those they exhibited in their play, casual conversations, and other social interactions. To understand the changes in both teachers' and childrens' learning, multiple forms of data were collected, including: taped and transcribed conversations about teaching and learning at monthly collaborative meetings; videotapes of monthly classroom observations, children's responsive conversations, and audiotaped open-ended teacher interviews about literacy lessons; teacher's collections of portfolio-type evidence of two target children's progress in each classroom; and three whole-class measures of response to narrative and expository text. Themes were traced through the data using perspectives from feminist epistemological and critical theories as well as sociocognitive and sociocultural response theories. Three processes emerged from the data as supporting the teacher's learning: (1) critiquing the constraints on children's responses; (2) seeking support for instructional changes; and (3) observing resultant changes in children's responses. (Sixteen references are attached.) (Author/MG)