To examine teachers' perspectives on effective instructional leadership, we
used the Blumer (1969)-Mead (1934) approach to symbolic interaction theory.
This approach to research focuses on understanding the meanings human
beings construct in their social settings. We developed an open-ended
questionnaire, the Inventory of Strategies Used by Principals to Influence
Classroom Teaching (ISUPICT), to investigate the question: What
characteristics (e.g. strategies, behaviors, attitudes, goals) of school principals
positively influence classroom teaching, and what effects do such
characteristics have on classroom instructio