NCTE’s research programs and projects support, publish, and share current scholarship that aims to improve the quality of English language arts instruction at all educational levels.
The NCTE Research Foundation was established in 1960 in honor of J.N. Hook, the Council’s first Executive Secretary. Hook served concurrently as the first director of Project English, a federally funded program that supported research in the English language arts, and later authored a history of the Council. Hook’s writing of this history, A Long Way Together: A Personal History of NCTE’s First Sixty-Seven Years (NCTE, 1979), was supported by the Research Foundation.
The purpose of the NCTE Research Foundation is to “improve the quality of instruction in English at all educational levels; to encourage research experimentation, and investigation in the teaching of English; to facilitate professional cooperation of the members; to hold public discussions and programs; to sponsor the publication of desirable articles and reports; and to integrate the improvement of instruction in English” (NCTE Constitution).