Challenges of Instructional Leadership for Reforming School.

This paper presents a study that examined the processes used by a school community and school leaders in a K-4 elementary school to implement reform mathematics instruction. The research, based on a case study, explored the changing nature of classroom environments, where teachers created learning opportunities, and the transformation in leadership strategies and changes in teachers' roles and relationships. Overall, the paper discusses the creative tension between two cultures within the school--tension that seemed to foster continual renewal and professional growth. The report looks at the switch from behaviorism to constructivism in the classroom and how constructivism recognizes students and teacher as a community of learners. It provides a number of vignettes of how reform measures operated in practice and how teachers came to understand the diversity of strategies and procedures students "invented" to solve problems. The paper also describes the creative tension between teachers who employed reform strategies and those who did not, and it discusses the principal's role in reform. New roles and relationships grew out of the collaborative decision-making between teacher-leaders and principals, and teachers began to realize that teacher leadership was necessary for instructional reform. Ultimately, success hinged on the teachers' willingness to take risks. (Contains 10 references.) (RJM)