Creating a school-wide focus on teaching and learning: Describing the role of the middle-level principal as instructional leader

The reform movement in middle-level education emphasizes the importance of principals and places teaching and learning at the center of the principal's role. Nonetheless, the task of the principal as instructional leader is ill defined in the current body of research and theory of middle-level education. There is no consensus about the mandates of such a role for middle-level principals. The reform frameworks are in place, which provide greater emphasis on curriculum and instruction, but the role of the principals in implementing and sustaining change, and acting as instructional leader in middle-level education, needs to be made much clearer.; The purpose of this dissertation study is to explore and describe the role of the principal as instructional leader and reformer in the effort to provide a responsive and developmentally appropriate education to middle-level students. Using the qualitative paradigm of interpretive research, case studies will present the unique stories of three principals currently enacting middle-level education reform and will illustrate the roles they play within such reform efforts. A framework for instructional leadership that is specific to middle-level schools results from the data collection and analysis of this study. Results from the study found that middle-level instructional leaders understand and enact instructional leadership by setting up organizational structures that allow for on-going high-level conversations within a positive and collaborative climate. A professional learning community forms by the engagement of teachers, students, and administrators in conversations about the important topics of teaching and learning for the purpose of improving the curricular and instructional practices of teachers and the learning by middle-level students.