251 Reading the Past to Inform the Future: 25 Years of The Reading Teacher Kathleen A.J. Mohr, Guoqin Ding, Ashley Strong, Lezlie Branum, Nanette Watson, K. Lea Priestley, Stephanie Juth, Neil Carpenter, Kacy Lundstrom The Reading Teacher has been changing with the times and informing educators since 1948. Examining the past content of this leading journal might help us move forward as literacy educators. W here are we going as literacy educators? Where have we been? Can examining the past help us move forward as researchers and practitioners? In 1992, the editorial team of The Reading Teacher (RT), led by editors Dillon and O’Brien (Dillon et al., 1992), published a content and trend analysis of the journal’s first 44 years of publication (1948–1991). As part of an anniversary issue, that analysis delineated the most frequent topics of the articles, providing a portrait of the journal’s focus and impact. The researchers used 51 codes to iden- tify the most common topics for published articles, and the published report focused on the 22 most fre- quent topics. The most frequently coded topics then were quantitative research (11%), instructional strat- egies (10%), and assessment (6%). The 1992 analysis also noted the most frequently published first or sole authors and related trends in authorship. However, that study was completed before online search en- gines and databases were able to provide more de- tailed information about the impact of a journal’s content. These new features, enabled by modern search engines, offer expanded opportunities to an- alyze such data, and these analyses are included in the current study. To understand the field of reading instruction in more recent years, we conducted a content and trend analysis of RT for the 25 years since 1992. This article reports the results of the recent analy- sis with the intent to appreciate and acknowledge the contributions of the leading journal of reading instruction for classroom teachers and to better un- derstand the field of literacy instruction. To afford a comparison with the previous analysis and up- date the profile of RT , the current eight-person re- search team was guided by the following research questions: 1. What characterizes the content of RT in the past 25 years (in comparison with the 1992 study)? a. Which topics are addressed in RT over the last quarter century? How (often) are these topics represented? b. How many different authors have pub- lished articles in RT? c. How many articles have one author, two authors, or three or more authors? d. How do the data break down over the 25- year time period (1992–2016)? THE INSIDE TRACK The Reading Teacher Vol. 71 No. 3 pp. 251–264 doi:10.1002/trtr.1636 © 2017 International Literacy Association Kathleen A.J. Mohr is an associate professor in the School of Teacher Education and Leadership at Utah State University, Logan, USA; e-mail kathleen.mohr@usu.edu. Guoqin Ding is a literacy doctoral student at Utah State University, Logan, USA; e-mail dgq@outlook.com. Ashley Strong is a literacy doctoral student at Utah State University, Logan, USA; e-mail astrong@wsd.net. Lezlie Branum is a senior lecturer in the Department of English at Utah State University, Logan, USA; e-mail lezlie.branum@usu.edu. Nanette Watson is a literacy doctoral student at Utah State University, Logan, USA; e-mail nanette. watson@aggiemail.usu.edu. K. Lea Priestley is the director of elementary field experiences in the School of Teacher Education and Leadership at Utah State University, Logan, USA; e-mail klea.priestley@usu.edu. Stephanie Juth is a literacy doctoral student at Utah State University, Logan, USA; e-mail sjuth13@hotmail.com. Neil Carpenter is a literacy doctoral student at Utah State University, Logan, USA; e-mail neil_carpenter@hotmail.com. Kacy Lundstrom is the head of reference and instruction in the Merrill-Cazier Library at Utah State University, Logan, USA; e-mail kacy.lundstrom@usu.edu.