Teachers, parents, policymakers, and others interested in researching what is best for teaching children literacy skills will find literally thousands of resources purporting to be "best practices." This book suggests examining real classrooms--teachers and students actively involved in literacy learning--to determine what works in practice. The book focuses on one teacher's research and shows how what became "best practice" for this teachers' second-grade students grew out of their growth as a learning community, providing this research through scenes of classroom life. By furnishing a model for teacher research, the book encourages teachers to conduct research inside their own classrooms. Following an introduction, the book is divided into these chapters: (1) Pondering Classroom Pressures, Celebrating Possibilities; (2) Research in the Classroom: Foundation and Methodology; (3) My Role as "Architect"; (4) My Role as "Artist"; (5) The Students' Complementary Roles as "Architects"; (6) The Students' Complementary Roles as "Artists"; and (7) What Have We Learned? Appendixes contain a time frame for the study and a timeline of important Elsewhere Expeditions and related activities. (Contains approximately 350 references, and author index, and a subject index.) (NKA)