Collective School Leadership and Collective Teacher Efficacy through Turbulence

Abstract

ABSTRACT Based on data collected in South Carolina from 2020–2022 through the Collective Leadership Initiative, we examined the collective leadership of six schools through cascading crises that resulted in extreme turbulence in many schools. Through an annual collective leadership survey, a collective teacher efficacy survey that we administered three times each year, and focus groups, we found remarkable consistency across all six schools. After conducting a multi-level confirmatory factor analysis and a categorical confirmatory factor analysis to determine that we could report collective leadership and collective teacher efficacy as single school-level factors, we found moderate to strong correlations between collective leadership and collective teacher efficacy. These schools used collective leadership processes that facilitated stability and improvement during a time of unprecedented, cascading crises.