Conceptualizing instructional leadership: The voices of principals

Instructional leadership has long been advocated as a primary responsibility of principals. What is unclear, however, is the role that instructional leader-ship plays in the current high-stakes testing era in the daily work lives of principals, how they practice as instructional leaders, and toward what instructional outcomes they strive. This study focused on how principals understand the relationship between their daily work and the improvement of instruction in their schools. The study incorporates the voices of 20 princi-pals. Multiple conceptions of instructional leadership are identified and prob-lematic aspects of these conceptions are discussed