Principals as instructional leaders: an international perspective (Brookings)

Historically, one of the school principal’s key instructional duties has been observing teachers as they teach and then providing feedback on the lesson. Ellwood Cubberly offers a vignette in the third edition of Public School Administration (1929) in which a young teacher’s math lesson is critiqued as follows: “entirely wrong procedure for type of problems used,” and “no attempt at problem solving instruction.” The teacher is praised for “managerial ability” but the principal’s notes reveal that his debriefing of the lesson included telling the novice instructor, “Being a new teacher to our school, she evidently did not know how we taught Arithmetic.”

http://www.brookings.edu/research/reports2/2016/03/24-brown-center-report-principals-loveless