*4.1.2 Principal supervisors help principals develop their skills as instructional leaders*

Principal supervisors stressed that in order to improve the quality of teaching, student academic achievement, and school performance, principals needed to be skilled in both instructional leadership and school management. However, they focused more on the "instructional leadership" component as it was what principals required most. As principal supervisor Julia noted, when leadership is focused on "improving instructional practices," it positively "impacts student learning" and raises "student achievement." Understanding this concept, she conducted critical observations both in and out of the school classrooms by evaluating the quality of the instruction, learning environment, level of student participation, atmosphere at the school, and interactions among teachers and administrators. Principal supervisor Bruno also conducted similar observations at his schools, stating:

*I will participate in that with the principal and her teams ... go and collect data together ... come back to it, and then sit down and unpack what we found. And I listen very carefully to what they have done, then let the principal go first. Then, there*  *is feedback, such as "That is exactly what I thought. That is what I saw. Have you considered what was happening in the classroom back at the corner here about such and such? Did you see that? Did you not see it? What does it mean?" The principal might say she found something I did not see, and so on.*

Bruno felt this procedure produced a clear commitment to the development of instructional leadership. He demonstrated a strong dedication to principals' "instructional leadership growth" by planning a series of "walk-through" observations that were immediately followed by mutual reflections with the principals to instruct them on how to more effectively observe, assess, and enhance the teaching techniques of teachers within their schools. Principal supervisor Emmy likewise emphasized the "instructional side" of the formative assessment, which provided a chance for principals to improve their instructional leadership capabilities, positively impacting teaching effectiveness and classroom learning.

The principal supervisors all paid special attention to the practices of instructional leadership in their supervisory strategies to guide principals toward achieving high levels of school performance, as stated in the individual principal supervisors' examples. These results confirmed other findings in the literature, which suggested that principal supervisors could make a more significant contribution to their schools by actively scheduling time for instructional leadership training in their supervisory activities [7, 36].
