0.3 Angelle, a., wilson, n., & Mink, g. (april 2011). building  (Page 5/10)

The practitioner partners who were interviewed were those principals and/or district personnel who were identified as having expertise in the course content. These partners co-taught with professors. Respondents identified as district leaders were district level personnel who worked in the large urban district where the university is located. This group has a distinctive partnership with the university because the Leadership Academy initial cohort were all employees of this district. Thus, the support and feedback from this group was critical to the success of the partnership. The university professors were limited to faculty who taught in the leadership preparation program. District superintendents, or their representatives, were limited to school system representatives who partnered with the university through formal memoranda of understanding and who were active in the Steering Committee, the advisory group to the leadership preparation program.

Data analysis

An interview protocol was utilized for each of the four categories of partners who were interviewed. All interviews were semi-structured and varied in length from 15-25 minutes. Interviews were recorded and verbatim transcribed. Transcripts were entered into QDA Miner, a qualitative analysis software program. Two researchers independently coded the transcripts and compared coded transcripts. Three systematic iterations were completed to determine frequencies in the data.

Working independently, each researcher created codes based upon the responses of the participants. For example, a response from a participant of “the experience, the conversation, and the, you know, collaboration of those individuals was just…it was neat” (Practitioner Partner 2) was coded as “experience”. A response of “the practitioner partner had updates from the field and provided information related to current trends and practices” (University Professor 2) was coded as “contribution to the course”.