Modeling how professional development interacts with teacher leaders’ outcome expectancies and school environment perceptions

Abstract

ABSTRACT There is increasing awareness that teacher leadership can serve a vital role in addressing many of the issues facing schools, but the conditions under which leadership capacity develops is still an open question. Most of the literature addressing this question is theoretical and based on small, qualitative studies. This quantitative investigation involving over 400 teacher leaders explores the relationships among teacher leaders’ outcome expectations and their perceptions of the school environment in which these teachers work. Further, a comparison of how these factors vary according to the teachers’ professional development experiences is examined. This manuscript provides validity arguments for a newly developed survey instrument. The findings of this investigation indicate that professional development focused specifically on developing teacher leadership is significantly associated with elevated outcome expectancies, and that a possible explanation for this increase might be related to how the professional development influences teacher leaders’ views of the resources in their school environment.