Despite the agreement that teachers are a crucial factor in student learning (e.g. Grossman 2010, Vibe, Aamodt and Carlsten 2009) there is still limited knowledge on how we measure the relationship between what teachers do and how it impacts student achievement. This has led to an increased focus on developing more systematic approaches for observing classroom practice in the recent years, not least through the use of pre-coded observation protocols (e.g. Grossman 2010, Pianta and Hamre 2010, Dickson 2011, Hill 2011). In our current discussion, we focus on the capacity pre-coded approaches have in ensuring datasets anticipating and affording a development of instruments for subsequent secondary analyses (e.g. Suri 2001, Clarke 2002). The instruments we discuss are teacher interview protocols and teacher logs (Klette and Carlsten, in press), large-scale surveys (Carlsten and Aamodt, forthcoming), and observation protocols for classroom teaching (Klette et al forthcoming, Carlsten, Grossman, Klette forthcoming). We provide findings on how various instruments open for different types of secondary analyses, and how this expands the discussion of shared standards among different methodological approches to classroom observation.