This article explores the cultivation of collegial trust as a central feature of the capacity-building work of 11 high school principals, nominated for their expertise with capacity building. This qualitative study examined interview data and school documents collected over 18 months. Principals regarded trust as critical and were motivated to engage in trust building based on their understanding of the importance of trust or by information that pointed to school-wide trust concerns. To address collegial trust concerns, principals set, enforced, and reinforced norms of interaction. Based on a review of interdisciplinary literature on trust development, and drawing upon a knowledge-based model of trust development where repeated interactions serve as a key mechanism for trust formation in organizations, three broad actions, emanating in large measure from principals' work to support and enhance collaboration, are identified as important with respect to the cultivation of collegial trust. Varied and context-specific strategies are noted.

Drawing from a three-year qualitative multi-case study that examined three urban elementary schools as these schools instituted grade-level data-based collaboration as a school-wide literacy reform strategy, this article investigates how knowledge of student learning and instructional considerations evolved over time across this collection of grade-level teams from data-based collaboration. For grade-level teams in this study, the generation of student learning knowledge from data-based collaboration was not an automatic outcome, but one that developed over time. The activation and use of student learning knowledge for instructional considerations also developed over time but varied by type of instructional consideration. Principal communication associated with data-based collaboration, a facet of their role as reform sensegivers, is also explored as a factor of influence related to the generation of student learning knowledge and activation and use of knowledge for instructional considerations from data-based collaboration. Of importance, the content of principal communication evolved over time for all three principals and appeared to shape the design and introduction of proximal tools and processes that supported grade-level data-based collaboration that in turn influenced the ways in which student learning knowledge and instructional considerations developed from data-based practices over time. Implications for policy and practice are considered.

This article reports findings from a 3-year longitudinal qualitative case study conducted in three urban elementary schools that examined the ways in which local leadership supported the initiation and early development of evidencebased grade-level collaboration as a mechanism for improving student literacy learning. Findings suggest eight key leadership roles-either individually enacted or jointly performed by principals and literacy coordinators. Central features of these principal-literacy coordinator relationships are identified and a shared leadership framework that details these eight leadership roles as well as strategies associated with role enactment are presented.

Research suggests that school leaders play an important role in cultivating and developing collaborative data practices by teachers. Although diagnosis and intervention are critical facets of leaders' work to support collaborative data practice development, this work remains poorly understood. Missing from data-use literature is more explicit and holistic attention to diagnostic factors and interventions of importance to the ongoing development of collaborative data practices. To address this knowledge gap, this article integrates largely unsynthesized literature to advance a schema for school leader diagnosis and intervention as a central mechanism for supporting the ongoing development of collaborative data practices.

This article investigates a yearlong professional development experience provided to two cohorts within a doctoral program for early career school leaders. Drawing from situated learning theory, we examined one aspect of this program’s pedagogy, which centers on the use of field-based application-oriented projects that leaders must take up in their school settings. From this investigation, we identified and reported two key elements of the school context that were regularly drawn into leaders’ application-oriented learning experiences. We also illustratively highlight several of the authentic leadership consideration and practice experiences that were enabled.