Conducting instructional intervention research in the midst of a state takeover

This article describes Year 2 of a three-year study on improving reading comprehension instruction in six United States elementary schools that was conducted during a state takeover of a school district. The authors, using a qualitative approach, focus on the effects of implementation of a mandated language arts curriculum, including an obligatory pacing guide, that restricted teachers' abilities to incorporate our three instructional interventions. The authors argue that the curricular mandates undermined teachers' abilities to draw upon their own professional judgment, even though the mandated curriculum and the instructional interventions were not radically different. Despite these limitations in our capacity to enact the interventions, the lessons that emerged from the clash between externally mandated curricula and teachers' agency build upon and extend what we know about effective professional development in literacy.