A 4-year project, Conceptions of Reading, was established to provide information about how teachers use reading theories and models and other conceptions as they plan and carry out reading instruction. The nature of the methodology dictated that the over-all goal of the project be to characterize how teachers think about reading and their reading instruction. The first year of the project focused on conceptualizing the scope of the project and developing the variety of measures that would identify teachers' conceptions of reading. Years 2 and 3 involved field studies in which 23 teachers were observed and interviewed to determine their conceptions and practice of reading instruction. In the fourth year, three teachers who were experiencing some contextual change were observed to determine effects of the change on conceptions and practice. The collected data suggest that a teacher's conception of reading is not a static set of beliefs regarding what reading is and how it should be presented but is, rather, a "free-floating" element that has little meaning until it is filtered through the teacher's conceptions about the classroom as a social unit and applied to a specific teaching context. (HOD)