Research on reading teacher effectiveness has taken several different directions over the past 30 years: during the 1950s and most of the 1960s, research focused primarily on teacher qualities; in the early 1970s attention shifted to the effect of the teaching process on student learning, while in the late 1970s and early 1980s experiments defined more specifically factors involved in teacher effectiveness. Experimental design as well as means of data collection and analysis also altered during this time. The isolated classroom observation of the 1960s, for example, was replaced in the 1970s by more direct observation in classroom settings. Despite distinct improvements, such as refinements in the determination of dependent and independent variables in teaching effectiveness, the generalizability of significant findings continues to be limited by methodological and experimental design problems. (MM)