Promoting principals' managerial involvement in instructional improvement.
Teach principals to schedule visits, set goals, give feedback, and praise—student achievement rises when they do.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Preston (1994) trained principals to act like behavior analysts. The package had four parts: set a daily goal for classroom visits, block time on the calendar, give teachers quick feedback, and praise good instruction.
Two small experiments used an ABAB reversal. When the package was on, principals visited more. When it was off, visits dropped. Student math scores moved with the visits.
What they found
Principals tripled their classroom visits after the training. Their feedback and praise rose too. In both experiments, student math scores climbed when the package was in place and fell when it was removed.
How this fits with other research
Mulvaney et al. (1974) did it first. They showed that a principal’s brief praise could lift math scores and attendance. Preston (1994) kept the praise and added goal-setting, time-blocking, and feedback.
HMelegari et al. (2025) scaled the idea. They bundled principal coaching into a rural PBIS rollout. Schools whose leaders got the training hit 70 % fidelity three times faster.
Pettingell et al. (2022) widened the lens. Across 39 schools, strong principal leadership predicted high-fidelity autism programs. The same coaching ingredients—goals, feedback, praise—still mattered, even with a new population.
Why it matters
You can turn a principal into an instructional leader in one PD package. Give them a visit goal, a calendar block, and a feedback script. Student scores follow. Share these four steps at your next admin meeting and offer to model a five-minute feedback cycle.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
Studies of school leadership suggest that visiting classrooms, emphasizing achievement and training, and supporting teachers are important indicators of the effectiveness of school principals. The utility of a behavior-analytic program to support the enhancement of these behaviors in 2 school principals and the impact of their involvement upon teachers' and students' performances in three classes were examined in two experiments, one at an elementary school and another at a secondary school. Treatment conditions consisted of helping the principal or teacher to schedule his or her time and to use goal setting, feedback, and praise. A withdrawal design (Experiment 1) and a multiple baseline across classrooms (Experiment 2) showed that the principal's and teacher's rates of praise, feedback, and goal setting increased during the intervention, and were associated with improvements in the academic performance of the students. In the future, school psychologists might analyze the impact of involving themselves in supporting the principal's involvement in improving students' and teachers' performances or in playing a similar leadership role themselves.
Journal of applied behavior analysis, 1994 · doi:10.1901/jaba.1994.27-115