Informal instructional teacher leaders: How principals can support them and their effect on instructional reform:

The single case explanatory study of the three elementary schools of a regional school district examined the relationship between the principal, a designated teacher leader, and a peer teacher in three elementary schools, in attempt to learn more about the relational factors that may work to inhibit or support instructional reform efforts. Qualitative analysis procedures were used to analyze data from the interview transcripts, the observational field notes, and documents related to the implementation of the SRBI reform. Two sets of interview transcripts from the nine participants were used along with two sets of observational field notes of the school’s RTI meetings, the grade level team meetings, and classroom observations of the three participating schools. The multiple sources of varied data worked to establish a chain of evidence that helped to construct the validity of the study. All of the data were reduced using a process of coding, memo writing, categorizing, and thematic identification (Anfara, Brown & Mangione, 2002)