This small sampling of the conceptual work behind the construct of instructional leadership reveals two features about the challenges in conceptualizing the construct First, the debates over the construct are more oblique than direct. That is, the literature with opinions about instructional leadership seems to be uninformed by empirical work testing constructs associated with instructional leaders' observed or measured practices. Among those studies validating various constructs of instructional leadership few build on the work of others or even test competing constructions of instructional leadership for both theoretical/practical validity and reliability. Even among the exemplary studies of instructional leadership reviewed in the third section of this chapter, a couple of studies suffer from a lack of replicational work.