Teachers' Progress toward Becoming Expert Strategy Teachers

In this article, I combine results from several years of study in an attempt to understand 11 teachers' progress toward becoming expert strategy teachers. The article is based on a 4-year staff development program involving 8 rural school districts in northern Michigan, during which 4-6 teachers were intensively studied annually. I use those intensive studies, as well as less formal observations of other teacher participants, to describe a continuum of 9 "points of progress" teachers seem to go through in learning to teach strategies to their lowest achievers. I argue that this continuum spans past collective thinking of the field regarding strategy instruction and foreshadows where strategy instruction must go if it is to achieve its potential.