Creating a system that encourages coaching, inquiry
and reflection results in leadership development that is
sustainable and enduring.
learning needs of specific students. Simulta-
neously, district leaders learned how to sup-
port the learning of school leaders to support
teachers. The result is the ongoing develop-
ment of a culture of learning and collaboration
within and across schools that addresses spe-
cific learning needs of students. For Newhall,
the primary focus was English learners.
School and district leaders learned how to
engage in inquiry cycles to both support and
deepen the adult learning necessary to address
the identified problem of practice, with the
ultimate goal of eliminating the achievement
gap. In the inquiry cycles, principals exam-
ine both quantitative and qualitative data –
test scores, formative assessments, classroom
observation data, student work – to deter-
mine a student learning need. This need cre-
ates a focus for the problem of practice.
The examination of data compels a leader
to identify a specific group of students and
their teachers to follow over the course of
the inquiry cycle. Examples from Newhall’s
work include student discourse for fourth
grade English language learners, second and
third grade English language learner vocab-
ulary development during core instruction
and first grade students assessing their own
learning in math.
Each principal frames his or her think-
ing around a traditional problem of prac-
tice model using the stem, “If the principal
____, then teachers will ____ which will
result in students ____.” The answers to
the prompts from this stem form the basis
for the learning the principal will engage in
throughout the inquiry cycle.
The principal and his or her coach engage
to learn the leadership skills necessary to
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Leadership
support the teachers’ learning and explora-
tion of new instructional practices. At the
end of the cycle, the principal and coach look
at freshly collected quantit