District M pursued a standards-focused instructional improvement strategy with many resemblances to the San Diego and District 2 approaches, but it also touted a policy emphasizing parental choice among the District's 14 middle schools, most of which were small alternative schools, reminiscent, indeed, of the thousand flowers approach that Alvarado once championed. This chapter takes readers inside three middle schools within District M to understand, from the schools' vantage points, how the two reform theories converged and interacted with one another, to the benefit or detriment of teaching and learning. It examines in more detail what the two reform theories presume about instructional improvement and systemic change and consider how each might complement or interfere with one another. The chapter provides examples of how instruction reflected the district's insistence on standards-based practice and evidence that student learning has improved over time.

The opportunity to build figurative bridges arose again and again across my career, and in places I least expected it. Close encounters with students, mentors, seminal ideas, and problematic situations kept pushing me to see new possibilities for my own and others’ learning. These encounters have occurred in my work as a scholar, teacher, advisor, participant in a collegial community, organizer of research teams, and servant of the field. I will relate and probe these stories, followed by some reflections on the lessons that may lie within them for surviving and thriving within academia, while maintaining a focus on issues of equity and social justice. But first ...[Download the PDF and read more]

This article addresses a gap in methodological writing, concerning typical practice in designing qualitative inquiry, especially in research on educational leadership. The article focuses on how qualitative research designs are actually developed and explores implications for scholars’ work, especially for new scholars and for methods teachers. Working from methodological literature across multiple traditions, combined with the author’s experience designing qualitative studies and guiding emerging scholars and practitioner-scholars, the article describes alternative ways to develop viable designs, noting essential considerations and trade-offs along the way. While noting differences by tradition, the article emphasizes common patterns and implications shared by multiple traditions.

This article examines two questions: (a) In what ways can doctoral-level learning experiences help executive-level P-12 leaders to develop instructional leadership expertise and commitment to high levels of learning among diverse student groups? (b) How can educators be supported in this learning within the context of an Education Doctorate (EdD)? To explore these questions, we first draw on the literature concerning adult professional learning, instructional leadership, and the doctoral education of educators aiming for administrative roles and practice, to create a framework for examining university-based efforts to guide aspiring leaders' learning in these realms. Then, focusing on the "instructional leadership" strand of an EdD program in which we are instructors, we examine how an appropriate learning environment can be constructed, and then illustrate the nature and evidence of learning with mini-cases of three different kinds of students who participated in the program.

Drawing on findings from a national study of learning-focused leadership in challenging urban settings, this article examines the work of teacher leadership in urban high schools. In this context, a recently emerging cadre of nonsupervisory teacher leaders, working in collaboration with supervisory leaders, exercises a form of “distributed instructional leadership,” creating new channels for instructional renewal. Extensive qualitative data from four high schools in different urban districts across the United States illuminate the nature of these teacher leaders’ work in support of teaching and learning, the ways they and their supervisory counterparts worked as instructional leadership teams, and the role that they played in supporting teachers in classrooms within schools that face significant challenges. Study findings highlight the unique expertise necessary for these teacher leaders—including content expertise, pedagogical coaching skill, ability to build relational trust, and capacity to link the classroom with district- and school-determined learning improvement efforts. In conclusion, the article sketches the implications for reconfiguring supervisory leaders’ work so that the efforts of all remain productively and persistently focused on learning improvement.

This article traces how the work of instructional leadership in the urban high school embodies a response to particular pressures in the school's environment. Based on evidence from multiple–case study research in four urban districts, the article demonstrates how supervisory and nonsupervisory leaders fashioned responses to the district (and state) system of instructional guidance and support, accountability, and the press for data-based practice. The analysis shows that in schools that display evidence of progress on a learning improvement agenda, the responses to environmental pressures reflect active engagement with what the environment offers, rather than the reactive compliance that can so often accompany reforms that emphasize high-stakes accountability.

Increasing numbers of English learner (EL) students and corresponding pressures to mainstream them mean that districts around the country are facing new challenges as they adapt to meet the needs of these students. For general education teachers, the challenges stem from a role shift in which they are now primarily responsible for the instructional needs of the EL students in their classrooms. This qualitative case study examined the assistance and support general education teachers received to work with linguistically diverse students. This article addresses the ways these efforts can form a "system of support" for teachers. The analysis focuses on 4 districts that serve different populations and proportions of EL students. Through interviews, classroom observations, and document analyses, this article examines how these districts attempted to provide coherent, sustained support to classroom teachers at all levels and, in doing so, created systems of support.

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to direct attention to the intersection of external and internal accountability systems within urban schools, and the role of school leadership, especially that of the principal, in managing this intersection. In particular, the paper explores how school leaders are able to strengthen and sustain the school's internal accountability system, in pursuit of school‐defined learning improvement agenda, and at the same time respond productively to external accountability demands. The paper also seeks to identify consequences of these leaders’ efforts to navigate an often problematic set of converging demands.Design/methodology/approachThis paper draws on findings from a larger multi‐case study of learning‐focused leadership in 15 schools in four urban school districts in the USA. Schools were chosen to represent those that were “making progress” (by local measures). Data were collected over 18 months, spanning two school years, from Spring 2007 to Fall 2008. Data collection included multiple site visits, semi‐structured interviews and observations of leadership activity across school and district settings, and a variety of documentary evidence.FindingsThough working in substantially different contexts, these leaders found remarkably similar ways of crafting tools and creating occasions, from the array of external accountability demands and resources, to serve internal accountability purposes. They did so by internalizing external expectations and developing accountable practice within the school, leading through data, and modelling what it meant to learn to lead in a fully accountable way. As they did so, they reshaped the scope of instruction and the instructional improvement conversation, and also made teaching and leadership practice more public.Originality/valueThis paper extends discussions of school‐level accountability in two ways. First, it updates scholarship on accountability by examining school‐level responses at a time five years into the new accountability context in the USA defined by strict system‐wide expectations and mechanisms. Second, the paper demonstrates ways in which the often onerous demands of external accountability systems can be treated as a resource by school leaders and used in ways that bolster the school's capacity for accountable professional practice.

A veteran research team describes what education leadership looks like and needs to flourish.