How Leaders Cultivate Effective Collaborative Environments for Teachers: An Investigation of the Role Site Leaders Play in Creating Teacher Collective Efficacy
Educational Leadership, San Diego State University
How they used Delve
A Doctor of Education candidate in Educational Leadership at San Diego State University used Delve to code interview transcripts from five high school principals and assistant principals, two teacher focus groups, and open-ended teacher survey responses, inductively building themes about how site leaders cultivate collaboration and collective efficacy in a two-school case study.
“For the interview and focus group transcripts, as well as open-ended questions on the teacher survey, the researcher used Delve data management software tool to assist with data coding. The researcher identified repeated topics in the responses to determine themes in the data and to code the data according to those themes.”
- Field
- educational leadership; professional learning communities; teacher collective efficacy
- Data
- Semi-structured interviews with 5 principals/assistant principals across two high schools (one large comprehensive, one small thematic) in a large urban California district; a teacher survey with 44 respondents of 147 invited (33 answered the open-ended item); and 2 teacher focus groups (5 and 4 teachers) on Zoom
- Approach
- Qualitative case study of two high schools (Creswell & Poth; Yin) using a constant comparative, inductive approach to theme development; closed survey items analysed with descriptive statistics in Qualtrics
- Data types
- Interviews, Focus groups, Open-ended survey responses
Abstract
Effective collaboration and the development of collective efficacy are understood to have considerable influence on students’ learning, with research showing that the presence of collective efficacy among educators is the strategy with the most potential to positively affect student achievement. Yet this strategy is rarely found implemented in schools with any consistency. For teachers to develop collective efficacy there need to be conditions that support effective teacher collaboration in place. This means that site principals must be intentional in the way they design and support collaborative spaces for teachers, playing a key role in developing collective efficacy. The purpose of this case study was to examine and explain the influence a school site leader has on the development of collective efficacy and identify promising best practices principals should consider when approaching this work with their teacher teams. Principal interviews, a teacher survey, and a follow-up teacher focus group were used to explore the strategies being deployed at the sites studies and how they impact collective efficacy. The findings of this study suggest that principals need to intentionally design structures and designate resources for teacher collaboration like full-day sub-release time and consider campus composition and the proximity of members of an identified teacher team on campus.
Citation
Carrie Wiley (2024). How Leaders Cultivate Effective Collaborative Environments for Teachers: An Investigation of the Role Site Leaders Play in Creating Teacher Collective Efficacy. SDSU Digital Collections.