This publication offers the 56th Yearbook of the National Reading Conference (NRC). This Yearbook begins with a preface and presents profiles of three awardees, Michael C. McKenna, Douglas K. Hartman, and Michael Kamil. Included in this Yearbook are the following papers: (1) What's It All About? Literacy Research and Civic Responsibility (Victoria Purcell-Gates); (2) An Historical Analysis of the Impact of Educational Research on Policy and Practice: Reading as an Illustrative Case (P. David Pearson); (3) Reciprocal Teaching 1982 to 2006: The Role of Research, Theory, and Representation in the Transformation of Instructional Research (Annemarie Sullivan Palincsar); (4) The Middle School Literacy Coach: Considering Roles in Context (Antony T. Smith); (5) Through Characters' Eyes: How Drama Helps Young Readers Understand Stories from the "Inside Out" (Donna Sayers Adomat); (6) Visual Discourse Analysis: An Introduction to the Analysis of School-generated Visual Texts (Peggy Albers); (7) Resisting Commercial Influences On Accessing Scholarship: What Literacy Researchers Need To Know And Do (Richard Beach, Amy Carter, Debbie East, Peter Johnston, David Reinking, M. Trika Smith-Burke, and Norm Stahl); (8) Outcomes of On-line Professional Development in Pennsylvania (Rita Bean, Helen Ezell, Natalie Heisey, Julie Ankrum, Naomi Zigmond, and Aimee Morewood); (9) Curriculum Reform in the Context of a State Mandate (Vicki Bensonriffo, Rokhsareh Kohansal, and P. David Pearson); (10) "Tweaking Practice": Modifying Read-Alouds to Enhance Content Vocabulary Learning in Grade 1 (Camille L.Z. Blachowicz and Connie Obrochta); (11) When Writing Leads: An Activity-Theoretic Account of the Literate Activity of First-Graders Stronger at Writing than Reading (Randy Bomer); (12) From Passive to Active Control of Science Vocabulary (Marco A. Bravo, Gina N. Cervetti, Elfrieda H. Hiebert, and P. David Pearson); (13) Competing Cultural Models of Literature in State Content Standards (Samantha Caughlan); (14) Six Successful High-Poverty Schools: How They Beat the Odds (Patricia M. Cunningham); (15) Reading Web Sites in an Inquiry-based Social Studies Classroom (James Damico and Mark Baildon); (16) Children's Selections of Science Trade Books (Carol A. Donovan and Laura B. Smolkin); (17) From Discontinuity to Simultaneity: Mapping the "What Ifs" in a Classroom Literacy Event Using Rhizoanalysis (Lara J. Handsfield); (18) Analyzing Art in Language Arts Research (Jerome C. Harste, Christine H. Leland, Sally Grant, Mi-Hyun Chung, and Julie Ann Enyeart); (19) Does an Established Model of Orthographic Development Hold True for English Learners? (Lori A. Helman and Donald R. Bear); (20) Teachers and Students as Agents of Change: The Enacted Literacies of Social Justice (Mary Beth Hines and Janet D. Johnson); (21) Reading Fluency: Neglected or Corrupted? (James V. Hoffman, Laura May, and Misty Sailors); (22) Seeking Self-Organization in Classroom Computer-Mediated Discussion Through a Complex Adaptive Systems Lens (Michelle Jordan, Diane L. Schallert, An-Chih Cheng, Yangjoo Park, Haekyung Lee, Yu-Jung Chen, Ming-Lung Yang, Rebecca Chu, and Yi-Fan Chang); (23) Investigating African American Language in Literacy Education Courses (Althier M. Lazar); (24) Examining Literacy Teaching Stories for Racial Positioning: Pursuing Multimodal Approaches (Melissa Mosley and Amy S. Johnson); (25) "Teenage Addiction": Adolescent Girls Drawing Upon Popular Culture Texts as Mentors for Writing in an After-School Writing Club (Emily Skinner); (26) The Anatomy of Retelling Scores: What These Scores Do (and Don't) Reveal about Readers' Understandings of Texts (G. Pat Wilson, Prisca Martens, Poonam Arya, and Lijun Jin); and (27) Reading to Play and Playing to Read: A Mediated Discourse Analysis of Early Literacy Apprenticeship (Karen E. Wohlwend). This publication also includes an introduction to the program by Patricia A. Edwards. (Individual papers contain figures, tables, footnotes, references and appendices. Editorial assistance by Brad L. Teague and Julie Ellison Justice.) [For the 55th Yearbook, see ED493694.