David R. Snow is a research consultant for Mid-continent Research for Education and Learning (McREL) and has served as an author on several large synthesis projects over the past several years. Qualitative analyses of research and writing for practitioner audiences constitute the bulk of his current work. His work for McREL is a natural extension of the qualitative evaluations he conducted while working for the Center for Instructional Research and Curriculum Evaluation (CIRCE) at the University of Illinois.