Studying the reconfiguration of leadership roles in the school entailed several kinds of investigative work. The data sources were all designed to develop a cumulative picture of the exercise of leadership in each school under study, along with the forces and conditions in the larger district and state system that shaped the leaders’ daily work. Therefore, the data the researchers collected came from sources both inside and outside the school. They collected data through interviews with school administrators, instructional support staff (e.g., teacher leaders), teachers, and other administrators, some in central office roles that worked with the schools; observation of school-based leadership processes and events; and the examination of artifacts of several kinds. Each source served as a vantage point from which to explore the research questions, and together allowed the researchers to develop a convergent picture of school leadership at work.

Interviews

Through four waves of field visits, they gathered intensive semi-structured interview data concerning the configuration of leadership roles and how individuals acting in these roles brought collective effort to bear on learning issues in the school. The interviews captured the activities and perspectives of several different kinds of individuals:

• Principals and other titular leaders (e.g., assistant principals, department heads) who spent most of their time with designated administrative responsibilities, including instructional leadership activities.
• Leadership team members (the composition varied by school). This source included formally appointed teams with representation from administrators, teacher groups, even parents and students; or leadership teams that were sometimes more ad hoc and even informal. In any event, the researchers looked for such groups 116 Leadership for Learning Improvement in Urban Schools that came together for the purpose of exploring and planning in relation to learning issues in the school. 
• Individuals in instructional leadership roles (e.g., teacher leaders, instructional coaches, or other staff) whose task it was to guide and support classroom teaching. They were often members of leadership teams as well. These staff offered an additional layer of insight into the exercise of learning-focused leadership in the school.
• A sample of other school staff, including teachers from across the school, classified personnel, and instructional aides. The main purpose of interviewing individuals from this group was to triangulate espoused practice and directions with actual practice and shared directions. Here the researchers sought to interview in each school three to six “rank-and-file” teachers, a centrally positioned staff person, and instructional aides, if there were such positions.

A central task of these interviews was to yield detailed descriptions of how the efforts of various people among the school staff (1) brought attention to focus on particular learning problems; (2) generated and, over time, reconsidered particular definitions of the problem to be solved; (3) identified courses of action that would guide and support teaching and learning; (4) carried out these courses of action; and (5) learned from and about the results of these improvement efforts. Alongside these foci of data collection, the researchers also learned from interviews about the context of the school, its learning climate, and its relation to the community it served. Drawing on these information sources, the researchers were able to render a first approximation of the way the school had configured its leadership roles and the conditions within the school that enabled that role configuration.

Iterative field observations in the schools

The successive waves of field visiting allowed the researchers to carry out observational work on a limited scale to assess key processes within the school that revealed the exercise of leadership in action. Observational work was limited to events in which Leadership for Learning Improvement in Urban Schools leadership was likely to be exercised (such as staff meetings, team meetings, school improvement planning sessions, or professional development events), when these coincided with the timing of field visits. 

The researchers also observed classroom teaching, mainly to yield data on the nature of the learning challenges targeted by the school and the response of teaching staff to instructional leadership initiatives. Then, primarily through triangulation of these observations with what they learned from interviews within the school, they were able to assess both the designed and enacted roles of school leaders, in relation to learning agendas, as these were defined within the school. 

School artifact analysis

Relevant artifacts collected from the school offered the researchers a final source for developing a nuanced, triangulated picture of school leadership roles in action and the results of this leadership activity. In particular, they paid attention to organizational representations of the school and its work (e.g., Web-based or paper descriptions of its mission, programs, or recent events), strategic planning documents, rosters of staff and descriptions of their roles, and information about how resources were distributed in the school. They also collected documents sent to the school by the district central office.

District interviews and artifact analysis

The same kinds of sources were solicited more selectively at the central office level—with emphasis on those units and individuals in the central office who interacted most directly with the schools. These data sources yielded a picture of relevant features of the district environment and intentional actions by district officials designed to guide and support school leadership. Here the particular focus was on (1) the local accountability and data systems, as these impinged on school leaders’ work; (2) the aspects of the instructional guidance system that had most direct implications for case study schools; (3) the leadership supervision system, reporting relationships, oversight, and mentoring (if any); (4) the parameters and guidance for leaders’ work offered by contracts and hiring expectations; (5) the local provision of professional development support for school leaders and any differentiation that occurred according to their level or experience; and (6) the arrangements for assessing school leaders’ performance, including how both formative and summative processes were used to direct attention to specific activities and learning issues.