Identifying Factors that Influence Perceptions of Teacher Efficacy as a Means of Building Capacity for Restructuring Schools: a Case Study Approach

摘要

Recent efforts to restructure schools through increased teacher involvement are likely to fail without a corresponding redesign of the underlying organizational and political structure of schools. Because the current structure of most schools actually prohibits the collaboration necessary to effect change and promotes professional isolation instead, staff members faced with the tasks of restructuring experience frustration more often than success. The changes that do occur are often superficial and cosmetic while the basic hierarchy and mechanisms of control remain intact. Allowing teachers to redesign their schools, specifically to develop new models that promote interdependence and the sharing of professional expertise, provides an opportunity to explore the reasons teachers might choose to forego the relatively safe world of the self-contained classroom to participate in the often stressful and time consuming development and implementation of new approaches to teaching and learning. Exploring those factors which motivate teachers to attempt innovation and determining the attributes and beliefs of those teachers about school change is the focus of this study. The study investigates the concept of teacher efficacy, the teacheru27s belief that his/her actions affect student achievement or that he/she has the u22ability to have a positive effect on student learningu22 (Ashton, 1984; Ashton u26 Webb, 1986). The perceptions of efficacy among selected teachers in an urban elementary school in the Northwest involved in implementing an Accelerated School model are examined in an effort to determine which factors influence those feelings. Identifying the issues which confront teachers engaged in innovation and the conditions they feel contribute to their success or failure is also an outcome. Increased efficacy, the perceived ability to u22make a difference,u22 is critical to classroom effectiveness and efforts to restructure schools. Data were obtained during the 1993-1994 school year by means of an efficacy scale based on the model developed by Gibson and Dembo (1984), structured interviews with selected teachers, an open-ended questionnaire, and observations during a sharing session with teachers in a nearby district considering a similar innovation.