Transformational Leadership and Collective Teacher Efficacy 1 Transformational Leadership and Teacher Commitment to Organizational Values: The Mediating Effects of Collective Teacher Efficacy

Transformational leadership researchers have given little attention to teacher expectations that mediate between goals and actions. The most important of these expectations, teacher efficacy, refers to teacher beliefs that they will be able to bring about student learning. This study examined the mediating effects of teacher efficacy by comparing two models derived from Bandura’s social-cognitive theory. Model A hypothesized that transformational leadership would contribute to teacher commitment to organizational values exclusively through collective teacher efficacy. Model B hypothesized that leadership would have direct effects on teacher commitment and indirect effects through teacher efficacy. Data from 3,074 teachers in 218 elementary schools in a cross-validation sample design provided greater support for Model B. Transformational leadership had an impact on the collective teacher efficacy of the school; teacher efficacy alone predicted teacher commitment to community partnerships; and transformational leadership had direct and indirect effects on teacher commitment to school mission and commitment to professional learning community. 1 Paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association, San Diego, April, 2004.The research reported here was funded by the Imperial Oil Foundation and by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council. The views expressed in the article do not necessarily reflect the views of either the Foundation or the Council. Corresponding author: Dr. John A. Ross, Professor and Field Centre Head, OISE/UT Trent Valley Centre, Box 719, Peterborough, ON K9J 7A1 [email protected] Transformational Leadership and Collective Teacher Efficacy 2 Transformational Leadership and Teacher Commitment to Organizational Values: The Mediating Effects of Collective Teacher Efficacy Previous research has demonstrated that transformational leadership contributes to valued teacher outcomes. For example, teachers in schools characterized by transformational principal behaviour are more likely than teachers in other schools to express satisfaction with their principal, report that they exert extra effort, and be more committed to the organization and to improving it (Leithwood et al., 1999). Few studies of the relationship between principal behaviour and teacher outcomes have examined the mechanisms through which leadership impacts occur. In this study we examined collective teacher efficacy as a potential mediator of the leadership – teacher outcome relationship. Agency Beliefs and Organizational Outcomes Personal and Collective Teacher Efficacy In this section we review the literature on the contribution of personal and collective efficacy to organizational outcomes to build the foundation for the first model that will be tested in our study: collective teacher efficacy as a complete mediator of the effect of principal practices on teachers’ commitment to organizational values. In the following section we will review the evidence for each of the paths in the first model and identify a second model which hypothesizes that transformational leadership has a direct effect on teacher commitment independent of indirect effects through collective teacher efficacy. Bandura’s social cognitive theory holds that beliefs about personal agency are the foundation of action. Personal or self-efficacy is the belief “in one’s capabilities to organize and execute the courses of action required to produce given attainments” (Bandura, 1997, p. 2). Personal Transformational Leadership and Collective Teacher Efficacy 3 efficacy affects behavior directly and by impacting goals, outcome expectations, affective states, and perceptions of socio-structural impediments and opportunities (Bandura, 2000). Individuals who feel that they will be successful on a given task are more likely to be so because they adopt challenging goals, try harder to achieve them, persist despite setbacks, and develop coping mechanisms for managing their emotional states. The relationship between beliefs about capacity and outcomes are reciprocal: outcomes affect efficacy beliefs and beliefs contribute to higher attainments (or lower attainments if the actor is in a downward cycle). Although personal efficacy scores tend to be stable over time, reciprocal causation can create iterative loops that amplify the effects of change (Lindsley, Brass, & Thomas, 1995): as one variable changes it impacts upon the second, which returns to affect the first. Collective efficacy " represents a group's shared belief in its conjoint capabilities to organize and execute the courses of action required to produce given levels of attainment" (Bandura, 1997, p. 477). Evidence that collective efficacy contributes to organizational effectiveness has been reported in a variety of settings including sports teams (Watson et al., 2001), nurses (Gibson, 2001), undergraduates in a brainstorming exercise (Prussia & Kinicki, 1996), and military groups (Jex & Bliese, 1999). There is also evidence that collective teacher efficacy contributes to organizational commitment in university work teams (Riggs & Knight, 1994) and bank employees (Walumbwa, Wang, & Lawler, 2003). Teacher efficacy is a set of personal efficacy beliefs that refer to the specific domain of the teacher’s professional behavior. Teacher efficacy refers to a teacher’s expectation that he or she will be able to bring about student learning. Teacher efficacy is of interest to school improvement researchers because teacher efficacy consistently predicts willingness to try out new teaching ideas (e.g., Ross, 1992). High expectations of success motivate classroom Transformational Leadership and Collective Teacher Efficacy 4 experimentation because teachers anticipate they will able to achieve the benefits of innovation and overcome obstacles that might arise. Teachers with high expectations about their ability produce higher student achievement in core academic subjects (e.g., Ross, 1992; Ross & Cousins1993) and on affective goals like self-esteem (Borton, 1991), self-direction (Rose & Medway, 1981), motivation (Roeser, Arbreton, & Anderman, 1993) and attitudes to school (Miskel, McDonald, & Bloom, 1983). Teacher efficacy contributes to achievement because high efficacy teachers try harder, use management strategies that stimulate student autonomy, attend more closely to low ability student needs, and modify students’ ability perceptions (evidence reviewed in Ross, 1998). Collective teacher efficacy is a specific belief in collective capacity. Collective teacher efficacy refers to “the perceptions of teachers in a school that the efforts of the faculty as a whole will have a positive effect on students” (Goddard, Hoy, & Hoy, 2000, p. 480). Collective teacher efficacy differs from individual teacher efficacy in that collective teacher efficacy refers to expectations of the effectiveness of the staff to which one belongs, whereas teacher efficacy refers to expectations about one’s own teaching ability. Although collective and individual teacher efficacy are correlated (Goddard & Goddard, 2001), they are conceptually distinct. The functional relationships between teacher efficacy and student outcomes reported at the individual teacher level have been replicated at the collective level in a few studies. Schools with high collective teacher efficacy have higher student achievement than schools with lower levels of collective teacher efficacy, independent of the effects of student socio-economic status (Bandura, 1993; Goddard, 2001; 2002b; Goddard et al., 2000; Goddard & Goddard, 2001; Goddard, Hoy, & LoGerfo, 2003; Ross, Hogaboam-Gray, & Gray, 2003;). There is also evidence that collective teacher efficacy is linked to school characteristics such as prior student achievement, school Transformational Leadership and Collective Teacher Efficacy 5 socio-economic status, and teacher involvement in school decision making (Goddard, 2002a; Goddard et al., 2003; Ross et al., 2003). In summary, previous research suggests that capacity beliefs at both the individual and collective levels influence organizational outcomes such as goal attainment and organizational commitment. The evidence is extensive at the personal teacher efficacy level, less so at the collective level. Figure 1 displays the first model to be tested in our study. Model A proposes two sets of paths: from transformational leadership to collective teacher efficacy and from collective teacher efficacy to each of three variables representing teacher commitment to organizational values. In contrast, Model B shown in Figure 2 hypothesizes that leadership has direct effects on teacher commitment and indirect effects through collective teacher efficacy. Figures 1 & 2 About Here The Path from Transformational Leadership to Teacher Commitment The essence of transformational leadership is dedication to fostering the growth of organizational members and enhancing their commitment by elevating their goals. In contrast, transactional leaders accomplish organizational goals without attempting to elevate the motives of followers or the human resources of the organization (Burns,1978). The dynamics of the role, and the rationale for viewing transformational leadership as superior to other conceptions of leadership, have been elaborated for a variety of organizations by Bass and Podsakoff (Bass, 1985; Bass & Avolio, 1994; Podsakoff, MacKenzie, Moorman, & Fetter, 1990) and extended to schools by Leithwood (e.g., Leithwood, Jantzi, & Steinbach, 1999). Transformational leadership provides a more powerful theoretical framework for interpreting principal behavior than competing frameworks such as instructional leadership because thinking about principals as transformational leaders leads researchers to investigate workplace conditions that contribute to Transformational Leadership and Collective Teacher Efficacy 6 the outcomes of reform initiatives; it accounts for teacher professionalism in school decision making; and it recognizes that the means and ends of teacher actions cannot be precisely specified (Leithwood, 1993). Although a few studies found that transformational leadership contributed to student engagement in school life (e.g., Leithwood & Jantzi, 1999) and student achievement (Verona & Young, 2001), the relationships between leadership practices and student outcomes tend to be weak. More persuasive is the evidence linking leadership to teacher outcomes. Leithwood et al. (1999) identified 20 relevant studies. Although the results on some measures were mixed, the reviewers found that transformational leadership consistently predicted the willingness of teachers to exert extra effort and to change their classroom practices and/or attitudes. The most consistent findings link transformational leadership to organizational learning, organizational effectiveness, and organizational culture. Organizational theorists attribute the effects of transformational leadership to social identification, which enables followers to transcend their self-interests for the good of the group (Bass, 1985; Bass & Avolio, 1994). Walumbwa et al. (2003) argued that the inspirational dimension of transformational leadership precipitates self-identification with the group. The collective identity becomes the yardstick measuring individual self-worth in relation to out-group members. Leithwood (1993) argued that the contribution of leadership to the development of a strong school culture was an essential mechanism for supporting staff collaboration that sustains collective identity. His synthesis of the research argued that 50% of the influence of transformational leadership comes from the visioning dimensions of the construct, with most of the remainder emanating from the leader’s provision of intellectual stimulation and individualized support for organizational members (Leithwood et al., 1999). This motivational Transformational Leadership and Collective Teacher Efficacy 7 perspective on leadership proposes that transformational leaders raise the aspirations of followers and align their goals more closely to organizational intents. An essential mechanism in this process is the elevation of the capacity beliefs of teachers and their confidence in the support provided by the organizational culture for attaining school goals (Leithwood et al., 1999). In summary, research on transformational leadership provides a consistent empirical link to teacher outcomes and a weaker, intermittent link to more distal, student outcomes. In our study we focused on teacher commitment to organizational values. Previous research suggests that transformational leadership should have a positive effect on organizational values but no research has examined whether the effect can be explained in whole (Model A) or in part (Model B) by collective teacher efficacy. The Path from Transformational Leadership to Collective Teacher Efficacy Several studies have investigated links between principal behavior and teacher efficacy. In all of these studies, teacher efficacy was measured at the individual, not the collective level. In every case, principals adopting transformational practices were more likely than principals with transactional styles to have higher teacher efficacy in their schools (Hipp, 1996; Hipp & Bredeson, 1995; Mascall, 2003). Although consistent, the correlations tend to be small (r=.20s and .30s), perhaps because teacher efficacy was measured at one level of generality (the teacher) and interpreted at another (the school). In addition these studies provided little theoretical explanation of why leadership and teacher efficacy might be related. Bandura (1986) argued that the sources of individual and collective self-efficacy information are similar. The most powerful source of efficacy information is mastery experience. Teachers who perceive themselves to have been successful on a particular task, either individually or as part of a collective, believe they have the ability to perform that task and Transformational Leadership and Collective Teacher Efficacy 8 anticipate that they will be successful in future encounters with it. Previous researchers have treated scores on mandated assessments as a proxy for mastery experience, finding consistent links between teacher efficacy and prior or subsequent school achievement. However, even if teachers accept external assessments as valid, their interpretations of the meaning of the scores is influenced by principal explanations. Even more important are principal inputs on teachers’ assessments of ongoing practice. For example, principals influence teacher interpretations by defining what constitutes success. Since principals typically have experienced a wider variety of school settings than their teachers and have legitimate authority, principals are well-placed to set feasible goals and interpret achievement data as evidence of success and failure to meet these goals. Evidence from non-educational settings supports this view. For example, Earley (1999) found that high status members of business organizations made a larger contribution to collective efficacy beliefs than lower status members. Leadership actions contributing to teacher efficacy include emphasizing accomplishment (Lee, Buck, & Midgely, 1992), giving frequent feedback (Chester & Beaudin, 1996), and promoting an academic emphasis in the school (Hoy & Woolfolk, 1993). Principals are likely to be particularly influential when they attribute outcomes to particular teacher actions. Lindsley, Brass, and Thomas (1995), in a theoretical analysis of collective efficacy, argued that leaders need to avoid upward and downward spirals of efficacy-achievement because such spirals lead to overand under-confidence that limit organizational learning. They argued that leaders need to promote self-correcting cycles by redefining success in transformational terms, treating failure and success as opportunities to figure out what works. Lindsley et al. provided a menu of strategies (e.g., intervene before spirals occur by providing accurate, timely feedback that exposes cause-effect relationships) enabling principals to guide the development of teachers’ Transformational Leadership and Collective Teacher Efficacy 9 collective efficacy. In addition to influencing the interpretation of past experience, principals can increase the likelihood of mastery experiences by providing opportunities for teachers to acquire