Karen D. Wood, PhD, is Professor in the Department of Reading and Elementary Education at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. A former middle school reading teacher and K-12 literacy specialist in the public schools, she is the author of over 200 articles, chapters, and books on such topics as integrating literacy across the curriculum, meeting the needs of diverse learners, vocabulary and comprehension development, and translating research and theory into classroom practice. Dr. Wood began writing the “Research into Practice” column for the Middle School Journal in 1986 and continues as its author today. She was a member of the authorship team of the McGraw-Hill Basal Reading Series from 1989 to 2004 and was the former coeditor, along with William E. Blanton, of the journal Reading Research and Instruction.

William E. Blanton, EdD, is Professor in the Language and Literacy Learning in Multilingual Settings Program at the University of Miami in Coral Gables, Florida. He has held faculty appointments at Indiana University and Appalachian State University, where he was a cofounder of the Laboratory of Technology and Learning. Dr. Blanton has coauthored reading instruction programs, edited journals in reading education, served on editorial boards of major journals, and published numerous articles and book chapters. His current research studies the role of culture in development, with a dual focus on characterizing children’s development and the development of the social institutions in which this process occurs.