Modeled after the Bay Area Writing Project, the Inland Area Writing Project has for the past 6 years identified exemplary teachers of writing and trained them to be teacher/consultants who can plan and implement their own staff development programs in the teaching of writing. The training program consists of an intensive 5-week summer workshop and a subsequent September-through-June followup that assists the new consultants as they schedule, plan, implement, and evaluate their staff development presentations. In 1977, a pilot study of the project's first year revealed a number of concerns, both among the participants and among the project coordinators. They questioned whether the summer session should be less participant centered and more syllabus directed. They wondered whether more experienced teachers needed the same kind of program as did less-experienced teachers, and they questioned whether all participants became effective consultants by merely attending the summer workshop. These concerns formed the basis for further research conducted during the next 5 years. Results from these studies suggested that teachers did benefit from development programs that focused on their needs and desires; teachers with more experience had more positive attitudes toward staff development than did teachers with fewer years of experience; teachers with internal locus of control had more positive attitudes than did teachers with external locus of control; and instructional techniques, such as role-playing, had little or no effect on teacher perceptions of themselves as consultants. (HOD)