Date of Award

Spring 6-2011

Degree Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Education (EdD)

Department

College of Education, Doctoral Program

First Advisor

Barbara Radner

Second Advisor

Anthony J Dosen

Third Advisor

Gayle Mindes, Jim Duignan

Abstract

The purpose of this correlational study was to determine if between-school variance in school-level student achievement is related to collective teacher efficacy in 10 urban elementary schools in Chicago. It also examined the effects of teacher leaders’ implementation of a School-University partnership and the leadership characteristics of principals on school collective efficacy. Collective teacher efficacy was measured using Goddard’s (1998) 6-point 21-item Likert Collective Teacher Efficacy scale. There were 280 teachers and 53 teacher leaders who completed the scale. The Collective Teacher Efficacy scale results were analyzed and examined in relationship to school-level Iowa Test of Basic Skills (ITBS) test scores. Descriptive statistics included correlations between the long and short forms of the Collective Teacher Efficacy scale, between collective efficacy of teachers and teacher leaders, between the measures of teacher leaders’ participation and measures of school leadership. All inferential statistics were computed using two-tailed tests and a significance level of .05 (i.e. α = .05). However, given the small sample size (N=10 schools), relationships that are statistically significant at the .10 α level were also interpreted but increasing the level of significance from α = .05 to .10 α decreases the reliability of the results. The study results show that due to the sample size none of the correlations is statistically significant between collective teacher efficacy measures and school-level achievement however teacher leaders’ participation in Saturday professional development workshops and collective efficacy and leadership characteristics of program coherence and teacher/principal trust and collective efficacy was statistically significant. This finding suggests that with a larger sample size collective teacher efficacy and school-level achievement will be correlated through teacher leaders’ participation in a School-University partnership and principal leadership characteristics. The theoretical basis for this study is Bandura’s social cognitive theory which defines human behavior in terms of continuous reciprocal interaction between cognitive, behavioral and environmental influences. This study offers evidence supporting a relationship between teacher leadership and principal leadership on collective efficacy which has been found in other studies to have a strong relationship to school-level student achievement.

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