ABSTRACT
Across the grade levels, teachers of the English language arts face many similar professional challenges. These can include unpredictable student variability; novel and often jarringly imposed administrative regimens, curricular mandates, and standardized assessments; disheartening political critiques in the media and naïve expectations from parents; unrequited quests for useful instructional material and helpful professional development; and the internecine crossfi re between specialist and administrative turfdoms. Chief among these diffi culties is the challenge of choosing appropriate and effective instructional methods to achieve pedagogic and curricular goals. Unfortunately, guidance from educational scholarship on how best to frame and make sense of these challenges can often seem puzzling, contradictory, or counter-intuitive.
