This paper explores methodological insights from a mixed methods study that aims to understand how school leaders promote literacy development in their schools. The study findings consider both the complementarities and the challenges of the qualitative and quantitative approaches to measuring leadership practices and their linkages with learning across schools. We begin by identifying a conundrum in school leadership and management (SLM) research – strong effects found in qualitative studies and weaker effects in quantitative studies. From the literature we identify some of the central challenges that account for these differences. We then show how these challenges were and were not addressed in the mixed method research we conducted in an SLM study of South African primary schools in challenging contexts. We consider why the central aim of the study – to develop a scalable instrument for measuring SLM – remains elusive.

中文翻译：

---

通过对学校领导力扫盲的混合方法研究来解决“领导力难题”

本文从一项混合方法研究中探索了方法学见解，旨在了解学校领导者如何促进其学校的素养发展。研究结果考虑了衡量领导力实践及其与学校学习之间联系的定性和定量方法的互补性和挑战性。我们首先要确定学校领导和管理（SLM）研究中的难题–在定性研究中发现强效，而在定量研究中发现弱效。从文献中，我们确定了造成这些差异的一些主要挑战。然后，我们展示了我们在充满挑战的环境中对南非小学进行的SLM研究中进行的混合方法研究中，这些挑战是如何解决的，而没有解决。