Drawing on research conclusions about the process of educational change, this report seeks to demonstrate the importance of understanding the diverse factors that inhibit or enable school improvement efforts. The report focuses on leadership and support in achieving successful change and stresses that principals are but one of several players who can create leadership for improvement. While not concerned exclusively with leadership and support, two school improvement studies are examined to illustrate how a variety of leadership configurations occur within different contexts and with varying degrees of success. Section 2 of the report summarizes the objectives of the studies--one on dissemination efforts supporting school improvement and the other on the role of teacher incentives and rewards in implementing a technological innovation. Insights about leadership and support that came from observing change at the field sites of the two studies are discussed in section 3. Section 4 describes the report's methodology and explores the institutionalization of changes and leadership and support as they were manifested at the sites. The kinds of leadership configurations associated with the presence or absence of different types of institutionalization are detailed in section 5. The final two sections offer conclusions and recommendations for further research. The two studies generally substantiate the hypothesis that leadership and support assume varied forms and have many sources. Educational change based on the collaboration of many actors is more likely to be successful because the opportunities created serve to maintain change after individuals move on. Numerous tables and figures comprise over one-half of the document, and include those derived from literature research and from diagrammatic analysis of the studies examined. Fourteen references are appended. (CJH)