Focus groups with teachers of students with learning disabilities ( n = 30) and teachers of students with emotional/behavior disorders ( n = 19) were conducted to examine the the teachers' perspectives about educational research and the extent to which they found research findings to be useful. The study further addressed the ways in which new practices were introduced within target teachers' schools and their reaction to the appropriateness of these practices for students with special needs. Findings revealed that most teachers were not pressed to use practices supported by their school or district. Furthermore, the notion of “research-based” was not important as a criterion for selection. Teachers sought instructional practices that were feasible, were appropriate for their students, were accompanied by all necessary materials and professional development support, and could be individualized for multilevel classrooms.

This study examined the extent to which the reading instructional practices learned by a cohort of teachers who participated in an intensive, yearlong professional development experience during the 1994-1995 school year have been sustained and modified over time. Teachers learned three multileveled practices—partner reading, collaborative strategic reading, and making words—that promote gains in reading for students from a wide range of achievement levels. Teachers were observed and interviewed 3 years later to determine the extent to which they continued to implement the practices, the ways in which they modified them, and factors that influenced their sustained use of the practices. With the exception of one teacher, all the teachers sustained one or more of the three practices at a high rate.

We investigated what had transpired in two elementary schools four years after we first began supporting one of the schools' efforts to restructure its special education program and three years after we provided a year-long professional development program to eight elementary and special education teachers. We had continued providing ongoing informal support during the years since, and wished to determine the extent to which the practices had "spread" to other teachers in our original school and a second school. Furthermore, we wished to learn why teachers who had not been a part of the original professional development program chose to learn and sustain use of the practices. A secondary interest was to discern how and why teachers adapted the practices. We found that 93% of the 98 teachers in the two schools had tried at least one of the practices and more than half continued to use one or more of the practices on a regular basis.

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The present study extends 8 years of previous research using Collaborative Strategic Reading (CSR), a set of comprehension strategies designed to improve understanding of expository text. We examined teachers' yearlong implementation of CSR. Five intervention and five control teachers from five schools participated along with their students. Intervention teachers attended a CSR professional development workshop and were provided with ongoing follow-up support. Students in CSR classrooms improved significantly in reading comprehension when compared with students in control classrooms. Teacher case studies reveal that with the exception of one teacher, students' comprehension gains were associated with the quality of CSR implementation.