The effects of principals' leadership styles, teacher efficacy, and teachers' trust in their principals on student achievement
Abstract
The purpose of the study was to determine the relationship between the principals' leadership behavioral style, teacher' efficacious beliefs, and teachers' trust in the principal to the schools' graduation rate, the ACT and TCAP writing assessment school-wide averages, and the AYP English/reading and AYP mathematics school-wide. Working on the previous studies by Bandura, Tschannen-Moran, and Goddard, the research design has been causal/comparative to test for the degree to which the four independent variables have an influence on student achievement. To accomplish this end, the researcher employed four measurement scales with 294 teachers in three public school systems in middle Tennessee. These scales included: (1) The Teachers' Sense of Efficacy Scale (short form), developed by Tschannen-Moran and Hoy (2001), (2) the Collective Teacher Efficacy Scale (CTES) developed by Goddard, Hoy, and Hoy (2000), (3) the Principals' Leadership Behavioral Scale (2011) developed by the researcher, (4) and the Teachers' Trust in the Principal Scale (2011) developed by the researcher. The data were analyzed to test 11 hypotheses. There were a total of 10 questions posed for the research and to help resolve these questions, the researcher employed correlation and simple linear regression and a step-wise regression. The study confirmed previous findings by Tschannen-Moran, Hoy, and Goddard concerning the positive effect that efficacious beliefs and trust have on student success and also showed a strong correlation between the principal's leadership style and the teachers' trust in the principal. The dissertation relied heavily on the theory of Bandura on self-efficacy and the study's conclusions include: (1) teachers self-efficacy is a predictor of the students' achievement in the graduation rate, the ACT, the TCAP writing assessment, and both the AYP English/reading and AYP mathematics assessment, (2) the combination of teachers self-efficacy and collective teacher efficacy proved to be a strong predictor of students' success in graduation rate, ACT composite, and the TCAP writing assessment, (3) a combination of the principals' leadership behavioral style, teacher self-efficacy, and collective teacher efficacy proved to be strong predictors of student success on the ACT composite, and (4) the principals' leadership style has a statistically significant relationship to the graduation rate and the AYP mathematics assessment. It is recommended that school systems and individual schools create teachers' in-service programs that lead to the establishment of professional learning communities in order to encourage teachers' collaborative efforts to improve student achievement. The school systems should evaluate principals on how well the principal establishes and maintains trust with the faculty, students, parents, and the community. Further empirical research that is based on a period longer than one year is needed to see if there is any relationship between the principals' leadership style and the teachers' trust in the principal to student achievement.
Subject Area
Educational leadership|School administration|Educational psychology
Recommended Citation
Charles E. Bozman,
"The effects of principals' leadership styles, teacher efficacy, and teachers' trust in their principals on student achievement"
(2011).
ETD Collection for Tennessee State University.
Paper AAI3468683.
https://digitalscholarship.tnstate.edu/dissertations/AAI3468683