Charles A. MacArthur, PhD, is Professor Emeritus of Special Education and Literacy in the School of Education at the University of Delaware. A former special education teacher, Dr. MacArthur has been conducting research on writing development and instruction for struggling writers since the 1980s. Most recently, he was principal investigator on two grants to develop and examine the efficacy of a writing curriculum for college basic writing courses. Other research projects have focused on the development of a writing curriculum for students with learning disabilities, writing strategy instruction, decoding instruction in adult education, speech recognition as a writing accommodation, project-based learning in social studies in inclusive classrooms, and first-grade writing instruction. Dr. MacArthur is a Fellow of the American Educational Research Association and a recipient of a research award from the Council for Exceptional Children. He has served as coeditor of the Journal of Writing Research and the Journal of Special Education, has published over 125 articles and book chapters, and is coeditor or coauthor of several books.

Steve Graham, EdD, is a Regents Professor and the Warner Professor in the Division of Leadership and Innovation at Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College, Arizona State University. Since the 1980s, he has studied how writing develops, how to teach it effectively, and how it can be used to support reading and learning. Dr. Graham's research involves typically developing writers and students with special needs in both elementary and secondary schools, with much of this research occurring in classrooms in urban schools. Dr. Graham is a recipient of the Thorndike Career Award from Division 15 of the American Psychological Association, the William S. Gray Citation of Merit from the International Literacy Association, and the Exemplary Research in Teaching and Teacher Education Award from Division K of the American Educational Research Association, among other awards. He is the former editor of several journals, including the Journal of Writing Research; coauthor of three influential Carnegie Corporation reports on writing; and coauthor or coeditor of several books.

Jill Fitzgerald, PhD, is Research Professor and Professor Emerita in the School of Education at The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. A former primary-grades teacher and reading specialist, she has most recently conducted research on literacy issues involving multilingual learners, text complexity, and vocabulary measurement. Dr. Fitzgerald is a member of the Reading Hall of Fame, a Fellow of the American Educational Research Association (AERA), and a recipient of research awards from Phi Delta Kappa, the International Literacy Association, and the AERA. She has published over 150 works, is currently associate editor of the [ital]Journal of Educational Psychology[/ital], and serves on the editorial boards of several other journals. Dr. Fitzgerald also has received university teaching and advisement awards and has been a review panelist for the U.S. Department of Education, the Institute of Education Sciences, the National Institutes of Health, and the National Institute for Literacy.