The research design is described for the study of instructional time, conducted as part of the Beginning Teacher Evaluation Study. The premise of the study was that certain teacher behaviors are related to student achievement; however, if all teacher behaviors are equal, the students who spend the greatest amount of time in learning activities will learn the most. Another variable of interest, the students' rate of learning, is also discussed. The goals of this study, which focused on second grade students, were to: (1) describe the amount of student time spent in various instructional settings, categorized according to teacher involvement, pacing, and group size for several categories of curricular content; (2) describe these distributions of time for reading and mathematics, for students within the same class, over several days for the same student, and for students in different classes; (3) describe the relationship between time spent in instruction and student achievement in reading and mathematics; and (4) develop procedures for the collection of time-in-setting data. The definition of the variables and descriptions of sampling and data analysis procedures are presented. Data collection activities included achievement tests, daily logs recorded by the teachers, and direct observation. (Author/GDC)