Examining the Link Between Teachers’ Professional Engagement and Their Collective Efficacy Belief: Mediating Role of Teacher Professional Relationships

Parents play an influential role in their children's health behaviors. Research has shown that individuals' efficacy beliefs (personal and collective efficacy) are closely related to their behaviors and can be modified to improve health outcomes. Existing evidence confirms the effect of self-efficacy on various health outcomes. However, the effects of parent-child dyads' collective efficacy beliefs on adolescents' health outcomes are less clear. Bandura and his colleagues postulated that family members' perceived collective family efficacy plays an important role in their psychological well-being and possibly their health behaviors. However, few study results have delineated the relationship between collective family efficacy and risky adolescent health behaviors. This study was conducted to examine the relationships among parent-adolescent dyads' collective family efficacy, satisfaction with family functioning, depressive symptoms, personal efficacy beliefs, and adolescent risky health behaviors. This cross-sectional study surveyed 158 parent-adolescent dyads from the Midwestern region of the United States. Linear regression and path modeling were conducted to examine the influences of dyads' personal and collective efficacy beliefs on the adolescents' negative attitudes toward healthy lifestyle practices, injury prevention, safe sex practices, substance use prevention, and depressive symptoms. Risky adolescent health behaviors were strongly correlated with higher depressive symptoms. The dyads' personal and collective efficacy beliefs emerged as protective factors for adolescent health risks directly and indirectly through depressive symptoms. Both adolescents' and parents' perceived collective family efficacy buffered the effect of parent-adolescent dyads' depressive symptoms on adolescent risky health behaviors with significant direct and indirect effects. Adolescents' family efficacy, satisfaction with family functioning, and filial efficacy significantly mediated the relationship between depressive symptoms and risky health behaviors. Parent-adolescent dyads' perceived collective family efficacy buffers adolescents from depressive symptoms and risky health behaviors. This finding suggests that family interventions should not only address adolescents' personal-level efficacy but also their collective aspects of efficacy beliefs within the family context.

PurposeRecent scholarship has augmented Bandura's theory underlying efficacy formation by pointing to more proximate sources of efficacy information involved in forming collective teacher efficacy. These proximate sources of efficacy information theoretically shape a teacher's perception of the teaching context, operationalizing the difficulty of the teaching task that faces the school and the faculty's collective competence to be successful under specific conditions. The purpose of this study was to examine the influence of three contextual variables: socioeconomic status, school level, and school structure on teacher perceptions of collective efficacy.Design/methodology/approachSchool level data were collected from a cross‐section of 79 schools in a Midwestern state. Data were analyzed at the school level using hierarchical multiple regression to determine the incremental variance in collective teacher efficacy beliefs attributed to contextual variables after accounting for the effect of prior academic performance.FindingsResults support the premise that contextual variables do add power to explanations of collective teacher efficacy over and above the effects of prior academic performance. Further, of the three contextual variables school structure independently accounted for the most variability in perceptions of collective teacher efficacy.Research limitations/implicationsA sample of 79 schools was considered small to accurately test a hypothesized model of collective teacher efficacy formation using structural equation modeling. That approach would have had the advantage of permitting the researchers to identify the relationships among the predictor variables and between the predictors and the criterion. Additionally, there was a concern of possible aggregation bias associated with aggregating collective teacher efficacy scores to the school level. Despite these limitations, the findings hold theoretical and practical implications in that they defend the theoretical importance of contextual factors as efficacy sources. Furthermore, formalized and centralized conditions conducive to promoting perceptions of collective efficacy in teachers are identified.Originality/valueExtant collective efficacy studies have generally not operationalized Bandura's efficacy sources to include the effects of current context. This study does.

Collective teacher efficacy (CTE) beliefs serve to encourage certain behaviours and constrain others. Bandura (Educ Psychol 28(2):117–148, 1993) was the first to generate interest in this area by demonstrating that the effect of perceived CTE on student achievement was stronger than the link between socio-economic status and student achievement. The purpose of this study was to gain a better understanding of the productive patterns of behaviour and other consequences resulting from educators’ shared sense of efficacy. Studies showed that CTE was associated with a number of productive behaviours including implementation of school improvement strategies, increased teacher leadership, communication of high expectations, and a strong focus on academic pursuits. In addition, CTE was associated with other positive factors including greater job satisfaction, commitment to students and the teaching profession, and positive attitudes toward teaching students with special education needs and professional development. Collective efficacy was negatively related to performance goal orientations and positively related to students’ emotional engagement. Finally, there were a number of studies that established the relationship between CTE and individual teacher efficacy. It is important to acknowledge that the relationship between CTE and other variables included in the studies contained within this review are most likely bidirectional. Policy makers, system and school leaders, and staff developers’ efforts toward successful education reforms might be better served by strategically and intentionally considering how to foster collective efficacy throughout the conceptualization, design, delivery, and assessment of change initiatives. Suggestions for future research and limitations including potential measurement problems of included studies are shared.

IntroductionUnderstanding the sources and the effects of collective teacher efficacy has been one of the central interests to many educational researchers and practitioners, because it is critical to understand how teachers can shape, and are shaped by, the educational processes in schools. Following the social cognitive perspective on the sources and consequences of efficacy beliefs, this study examined how school support influences collective teacher efficacy which in turn affects teachers’ organizational commitment.MethodThe participants included 969 teachers sampled from 28 primary and secondary schools in Hong Kong. To appropriately address the nature of collective teacher efficacy and school support as school-level variables, the doubly latent multilevel structural equation modeling approach was used to analyze the data.ResultsThe results revealed the mediation mechanism played by collective teacher efficacy in explaining the effect of school support on teachers’ organizational commitment.DiscussionSchools are suggested to consider fostering a supportive school environment as a strategy to improve teachers’ collective efficacy beliefs if it is wished to enhance teachers’ commitment to schools.

Tujuan – Berdasarkan model kognitif sosial, kajian ini mengkaji kesan langsung dan tidak langsung terhadap efikasi guru secara kolektif. Secara khusus, kajian ini menilai peranan kesejahteraan hidup, keserakanan, kesejahteraan di tempat kerja dalam menerangkan efikasi guru secara kolektif. Metodologi – Seramai 836 sampel guru dipilih secara rawak dari dua belas buah MRSM Zon Timur di Malaysia. Data kajian ini diperolehi melalui soal selidik yang mengandungi 85 item. Data ini telah dianalisis dengan menggunakan statistik deskriptif dan Analisis Persamaan Berstruktur. Dapatan – Dapatan kajian ini menunjukkan kesejahteraan hidup, keserakanan dan kesejahteraan di tempat kerja adalah secara signifikan mempengaruhi efikasi guru secara kolektif. Berdasarkan kepada penilaian keseluruhan model, didapati bahawa kesepadanan model adalah munasabah. Dapatan analisis persamaan berstruktur menunjukkan bahawa kesejahteraan di tempat kerja adalah pengantara separa hubungan kesejahteraan hidup guru, keserakanan guru dan efikasi guru secara kolektif. Berbanding kesejahteraan hidup, keserakanan guru memperlihatkan kesan yang lebih kuat terhadap efikasi guru secara kolektif. Signifikan – Kajian ini memperkenalkan model yang menunjukkan kepentingan kesejahteraan hidup, keserakanan dan kesejahteraan di tempat kerja sebagai penyumbang yang signifi kan kepada efikasi guru secara kolektif. Ia juga mengenal pasti kepentingan keserakanan guru dalam membangunkan efikasi guru secara kolektif.

The Evaluation of Self-efficacy, Collective Efficacy Beliefs in Handball in Terms of Gender

Efficacy is a person’s degree of beliefs and confidence to implement a task and produce a positive change. Efficacy can be divided into two aspects, namely self-efficacy and collective efficacy. In the context of education, the focus of research on efficacy is on teacher self-efficacy and collective teacher efficacy. Teacher self-efficacy is teachers’ belief in their own ability to carry out a task in order to bring positive changes, while collective teacher efficacy is the shared belief of teachers from different backgrounds and competencies in their ability to achieve the same goal. Collective efficacy depends on teacher self-efficacy to create collective beliefs in ensuring the achievement of the school’s vision and mission. Studies on collective teacher efficacy have brought positive effects on student performance and achievement and become an indicator of student performance. However, the research trend has shifted to focus on the relationship between collective teacher efficacy and teacher leadership. It was found that collective teacher efficacy not only influenced student performance and achievement but also affected teacher leadership. In the Malaysian context, studies on collective teacher efficacy are still scarce and they mostly focused on demographic levels, factors affecting teacher collective efficacy, level of collective teacher efficacy and the relationship between collective teacher efficacy and student achievement. As teacher quality is an important factor in educational improvement, it is proposed that future studies in the Malaysian context emphasize the relationship between teacher collective efficacy and issues regarding teacher leadership as they eventually bring positive effects on students’ academic achievement. Therefore, more research is needed to address the role of teacher collective efficacy on teacher leadership in promoting quality of teaching and learning. A large scale radical improvement in the educational field is highly needed.

PurposeResearchers have provided critiques of teacher efficacy research along with suggestions for future research, but no recent reviews have examined the state of collective teacher efficacy (CTE) research as it relates specifically to professional development. This review addressed the following questions: How much research attention has been paid to professional learning and CTE? What does the research tell us about professional learning and CTE? What do we know about influencing CTE through professional learning? The paper aims to discuss these issues.Design/methodology/approachEducational Resources Information Center and EBSCO databases were searched for peer-reviewed articles written in English and published over the last ten years (between 2007 and 2017). The search terms included “collective efficacy” and “teacher or teachers” and “professional development and professional learning” and were extended beyond titles to include keywords contained within the articles. This would help to broaden the search and increase the number of hits.FindingsThere is little that can be gleaned from the research related to professional learning and the contextual factors that influence collective efficacy beliefs. Only one study (Paxon et al., 2014) in this review considered the formation of CTE in relation to both remote and proximate sources. Although some of the studies explained Bandura’s (1993) sources of CTE, reference to the sources were notably absent in the reported findings, implications, and conclusions of many of the studies. Contextual variables examined in the component studies included either implementation patterns, trust, sense of belonging, teacher uncertainty, opportunities for teacher leadership, social relationships, and/or labels assigned to low performing districts and/or high performing districts.Research limitations/implicationsA limitation that influences the findings of this review is that the review was not exhaustive, and articles written in English with the search terms outlined did not capture the population of possible articles. Future reviewers may uncover new patterns in CTE research by searching non-English journals and by examining the range of work completed in graduate theses and dissertations.Practical implicationsIn regard to promising professional learning designs, inquiry based approaches, including collaborative action research, problem-solving groups, and teams’ monitoring and tracking individual student progress seemed to hold promise. In each of these designs, educators collaboratively analyze student evidence for the purpose of evaluating their impact, reflecting on their collective work, and determining optimal next steps. Interpreting results by examining student learning data might help to strengthen connections between perceived levels of difficulty related to teaching tasks and perceptions of group competence. When conversations shift from generalized talk about student’s progress and polite sharing of teaching strategies to more in-depth conversations about the connections between the two, professional learning becomes more impactful. The interpretation of results, leads to shifts in causal attributions – from assumptions which included “I planned and taught the lesson, but they didn’t get it” to “you haven’t taught it until they’ve learned” as a result of engaging in these types of professional learning designs.Originality/valueHattie’s (2015) research, which synthesized major findings from over 1,200 meta-analyses relating to influences on student achievement, demonstrated the magnitude and overall distribution of more than 150,000 effect sizes. In a recent update, Hattie (2016) ranked CTE as the number one influence of all the factors related to student achievement, reporting an effect size of 1.57.This update was based on Eells’ (2011) meta-analysis that synthesized correlational evidence for CTE and student achievement. Eells (2011) found that CTE was strongly and positively associated with student achievement “across subject areas, when using varied instruments, and in multiple locations” (p. 110). Eells (2011) finding is becoming more widely disseminated through the promotion of Hattie’s (2016) Visible Learning Research due to its prominent position within that body of evidence. Thus, the interest of practitioners in the field, including administrators, teachers, and professional learning facilitators has been piqued. Gaining a better understanding of CTE, sources that shape it, and its antecedents and consequences are likely to surface as a major upcoming focus for designers and facilitators of professional learning. There is a small amount of extant research that examined professional development effects on teacher efficacy (Tschannen-Moran and McMaster, 2009; Ross and Bruce, 2007). However, there are many voids in the collective efficacy research. Given this void and the increased interest to gain a better understanding of CTE on part of practitioners, not only is additional research needed, it is imperative to find ways to address the ongoing dilemma of making research and theory relevant to educators’ practice.

Pupils’ behaviour can affect teacher morale, attrition, and exclusions. Teachers’ efficacy beliefs can serve as a protective factor against stress and burnout. This study examined a possible association between teachers’ collective efficacy (CE) beliefs and exclusion rates, and whether student-teacher relationships (STRs) affected CE beliefs and teachers’ views about how they responded to difficult behaviour. A mixed methods design was utilised with four secondary schools in one UK local authority. A questionnaire ascertained CE beliefs. Subsequently, semi-structured interviews with ten teachers, with high and low CE, were conducted. A significant association was found between CE and the rate of fixed term exclusions. Interview data revealed four broad themes: The “Quality of Relationships”; the effects on “Efficacy Beliefs”; less “Reliance on Disciplinary Approaches” and having “Greater Tolerance”. Positive STRs enable teachers to provide an environment in which behaviours are more respectful, reducing the need for disciplinary approaches, such as exclusion.

Researchers have sought to define teacher efficacy, and done so based on work conducted in the 1970s by the RAND organisation and also Bandura’s Social Cognitive Theory. Efficacy the belief in one’s capabilities to organize and execute the courses of action required to manage prospective situations. Collective efficacy refers to the judgment of teachers in a school that the faculty as a whole can organise and execute the courses of action required to have a positive effect on students. Self efficacy (SE) and collective efficacy (CE) beliefs seem to be very closely linked to childrens’ progress. This study seeks to shed light on self efficacy and collective efficacy beliefs of teachers’ for children with autism in autism schools across the UK. Teachers from 137 schools for children with autism across UK will be asked to complete and online survey consisting of three questionnaires on demographic, self efficacy and collective efficacy beliefs.

We examined collective efficacy beliefs, including levels of within-group agreement and correlation with performance quality, of instrumental chamber ensembles (70 musicians, representing 18 ensembles). Participants were drawn from collegiate programs and intensive summer music festivals located in the northwestern and western regions of the United States. Individuals completed a five-item survey gauging confidence in their group’s performance abilities; each ensemble’s aggregated results represented its collective efficacy score. Ensembles provided a video-recorded performance excerpt that was rated by a panel of four string specialists. Analyses revealed moderately strong levels of collective efficacy belief and uniformly high within-group agreement. There was a significant, moderately strong correlation between collective efficacy belief and within-group agreement ( rs = .67, p < .01). We found no relationship between collective efficacy belief and performance quality across the total sample, but those factors correlated significantly for festival-based ensembles ( rs = .82, p < .05). Reliability estimates suggest that our collective efficacy survey may be suitable for use with string chamber ensembles. Correlational findings provide partial support for the theorized link between efficacy belief and performance quality in chamber music settings, suggesting the importance for music educators to ensure that positive efficacy beliefs become well founded through quality instruction.

Teaming up: Linking collaboration networks, collective efficacy, and student achievement

Collective efficacy is an emergent construct that describes an interdependent group’s perceptions of their combined capability to successfully complete a task or accomplish a goal. Developed as part of social cognitive theory, collective efficacy assumes that the group actors have agency. Collective efficacy beliefs are theorised to be reciprocally related to environmental and behavioural factors. Empirical investigation of this construct found that it is distinct from personal efficacy beliefs and fostered through mastery experiences. Collective teacher efficacy predicts student achievement and teacher attitudes toward their jobs. Study of collective efficacy is limited to mostly adult samples.

The purpose of this study was to examine the conceptualization, measure and impacts of school principals’ sense of efficacy for instructional improvement. Based on social cognitive theory and prior research, we hypothesized that principals’ sense of efficacy for instructional leadership would directly predict teachers’ collective efficacy beliefs and indirectly predict student achievement through collective efficacy. We employed multilevel structural equation modeling (MSEM) to analyze data collected from 95 principals, 1,623 teachers, and 4,229 students in a Midwestern state. Results indicated that principals’ efficacy beliefs positively and significantly predicted teachers’ collective efficacy beliefs, which in turn predicted student achievement.

This quantitative study aims to explore the validity of Donohoo et al.’s (2020) Enabling Conditions for Collective Teacher Efficacy Scale (EC-CTES) for fostering collective efficacy in schools and evaluate its relationship to measures of collective teacher efficacy. The instruments used for this study include the EC-CTES, the Collective Efficacy Scale (CES-SF), and the Collective Teacher Beliefs Scale (CTBS). The data were evaluated through confirmatory factor analysis, correlation matrices, and multiple regression models. The findings from this study demonstrate that the EC-CTES is a valid tool. The EC-CTES subscales are positively associated with measures of collective teacher efficacy. We recommend adjustments for the EC-CTES subscales for greater congruence with collective efficacy theory and practical application. Due to the theoretical density of collective teacher efficacy, a modified conceptual framework is proposed to make the enabling conditions theory more accessible to practitioners.