What needs to be presented to practitioners, particularly school leaders in training, for them to become educated consumers of education research? This paper attempts to sort through the issues and evaluate some of the instructional alternatives available to education administration faculty and curriculum designers. Taking into account a political and intellectual context that features tenacious and persistent debate over identifying quality research, this paper employs a three-pronged approach to analyzing the problem of introducing research literacy to educational leaders. First, placed in the context of course construction, a consideration of recent commentary on how best to introduce practitioners to education research provides an overview of debates among faculty in schools of education. Second, a content analysis of three popular textbooks on educational research methods allows for observations about the quality and applicability of instructional resources available to methods teachers. The paper also incorporates data collected from surveys of teachers and administrators in two graduate educational administration programs for future educational leaders located at a prominent research-oriented school of education. The survey instrument is appended.) (Contains 6 tables and 16 references.) (Author)