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Abstract
Teachers in the study were mandated to follow district and school mandates that were anti-thetical to their beliefs about literacy instruction. All of the participants had adopted the whole language philosophy, which informed their classroom practices. External forces such as changes in leadership as well as political and parental pressures caused new mandates to become imposed on their teaching practices. Extensive interviews were conducted to determine how these teachers dealt with such mandates. The results indicated that the teachers developed various coping strategies in an attempt to reconcile the incongruence between their beliefs about literacy instruction and mandates that were in opposition to those beliefs. The strategies used by the teachers consisted of compromise, giving up, direct compliance, appearance of compliance, closing the door and ignoring the mandates, and leaving the school system.