The Comprehensive Assessment of Leadership for Learning (CALL) utilizes a Distributed Leadership framework to measure leadership. This is a departure from the traditional approach to assessing leadership has focused solely on the principal. For example, a traditional survey of school leadership could include the following question:

How effective is the principal in implementing professional development activities?

• Not effective
• Somewhat effective
• Reasonably effective
• Very effective
• Extremely effective

For this item, the principal is the target of the question. However, it may be the case that in a given school, the principal is not implementing professional development activities. It could be an assistant principal, a teacher leader, or maybe a district leader. The fact is that it matters less who is doing this work compared the quality of the work itself. With that in mind, the following CALL item inquires about the same construct:

Which of the following best describes how well school-wide professional development activities reflect the instructional goals of the school?

• They do not reflect the instructional goals of the school.
• They reflect the instructional goals of the school, but do not address needs for teacher learning.
• They reflect needs for teacher learning, but are not differentiated to address the various learning needs of the teachers.
• They are differentiated to address the various learning needs of teachers, but do not utilize teacher expertise.
• They are differentiated to address the various learning needs of teachers and delivered using the expertise of teachers.

For this question, the focus is on the actual activity itself. And survey respondents (teachers, staff) are engaged in reflection and considering how these activities impact their work.

And here is that item as presented in the CALL survey platform and the resulting Data Feedback System:

Please take the opportunity to view more sample items the CALL sample survey.