Federal policies and local practices pertaining to inservice teacher education were analyzed from four perspectives. A content analysis was made of current inservice literature. The relationship between assumptions about effective inservice education in the literature and in federal government statements was analyzed. A team of researchers compared six Teacher Corps programs in their contexts and demonstrated how uniqueness emerges among programs based on the same federal rules and regulations. An analysis was made of the content of anecdotes written by central staff in Teacher Corps programs to ascertain the importance of certain factors in the transition from policy statements to inservice practice. The relationship between Teacher Corps policy statements and resulting inservice programs was examined. The findings suggest that: (1) There are specific assumptions about effective inservice teacher education, some of which are reflected both in the literature and in federal policy statements; (2) Federal programs based on the same rules and regulations are similar in terms of certain basic processes and different in terms of context-related variables such as content, strategies, and unanticipated critical events; and (3) There is a need for more systematic forecasting related to inservice teacher education because there are discrepancies among literature, federal policies, and local practice. (JD)