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The purpose of this paper is to examine the role of collective teacher efficacy, academic press and faculty trust, all of which are components of academic optimism (AO), in predicting school innovation. In addition, the authors explored the extent to which faculty trust mediates the association between collective teacher efficacy and academic press with school innovation.

In all, 1,009 teachers from 79 schools in Northern Israel completed anonymous questionnaires about AO and innovation. Aggregation, descriptive statistics, bivariate correlation analyses and mediation analysis were performed to analyze the data.

Results showed that the components of AO, i.e., collective teacher efficacy, academic press and trust, were positively correlated to school innovation, and that trust mediated the relationship between collective teacher efficacy and school innovation. The study results confirmed that AO holds a significant predictive value in school innovation and highlights the importance of trust in supporting innovation.

As school leaders are challenged to foster innovative new practices in their schools, the findings suggest that they will need to know how to cultivate collective teacher efficacy, academic press and faculty trust.

This is the first study to examine the role of the components of AO in predicting innovation. By using a robust sample, the authors were able to examine the proposed school-level model with respect to the factors that affect school innovation. Originality also lies in the organizational approach to educational innovation in relation to faculty’s beliefs and behaviors.

Collective teacher efficacy (CTE) is a promising construct for understanding how schools can foster student achievement. Although much of the early research on CTE took place in North America, researchers from other parts of the world are now delving into this topic. The current study explores whether these powerful collective beliefs function similarly across diverse cultural and linguistic groups: Arab and Jewish teachers in Israel, and teachers in Turkey and the USA.

Participants included 4,216 teachers from Israel, Turkey and the USA, representing four cultures: Arab, Jewish, Turkish and American. We tested configural invariance using multigroup confirmatory factor analysis (AMOS) and alignment optimization (Mplus) to identify the groups in which specific parameters are noninvariant, and to compare the latent factor means.

Configural invariance showed adequate fit of the model structure across the four groups. Based on invariance tests, using the alignment optimization method, CTE scales held different meanings for specific items across the four cultures, where the USA and Arab cultures were the sources of these differences. Furthermore, in comparing the two-dimensional CTE belief scale across the four groups, latent means revealed the highest mean ranking for the USA and the lowest for Turkey.

This research makes a significant theoretical contribution by examining and comparing the concept of teachers' collective efficacy in multiple cultures. This comparison can also contribute to instructional teaching practices worldwide.

The purpose of this paper is to explore whether the emotional intelligence (EI) of instructional coaches could be improved with training, as well as how instructional coaches perceived the relevance of EI to their success as coaches.

This mixed-method study was conducted in two phases. The quantitative phase examined pre- and post-test EI scores of 90 instructional coaches who completed a 20-hour coach training intervention designed to improve the coaching skills of educators working with teachers to improve their instruction. Of the nine instructional coaches interviewed for the qualitative phase, four had increased their EI scores while five had decreased. The study took place primarily in the USA, with two participants in the survey portion from countries outside the USA.

Statistically significant increases for EI were found in the full sample. Among the 44 instructional coaches who enrolled on the training course voluntarily, there were significant improvements in total EI, both the interpersonal and interpersonal composites, and all five subscales (i.e. self-awareness, self-regulation, motivation, empathy, and social skills). The mean EI scored for the 46 coaches who were required to take the training did not increase. The themes that emerged from the interviews were increased awareness, improved listening, enhanced empathy, a focus on strengths, and the role of EI in success as instructional coaches.

Future research might examine the duration, intensity, and format of training that successfully increases EI scores. For example, comparing face-to-face formats with distance formats, such as the one used in this study, might yield interesting findings. This study would have been strengthened by the inclusion of a control group that received no training.

Both quantitative and qualitative analyses provided evidence that EI can be improved through training; thus, such training could be incorporated into initial preparation and ongoing professional development for educators. The differential outcomes for those who volunteered for the training as opposed to those who were required to take the training as part of their jobs highlights the important of the adult learning principle of choice. Thus, the element of choice should be taken into consideration in planning professional development.

The use of instructional coaches is an important form of professional development, designed to bring about improved teacher practices. This study provides both quantitative and qualitative evidence of the value of coach training, including statistically significant gains on a validated measure of EI. This study makes an important contribution because prior research on the question of whether EI can be taught has been largely anecdotal.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the relationships among faculty trust in the principal, principal leadership behaviors, school climate, and student achievement.

Data from 64 elementary, middle, and high schools in two school districts formed the basis of the study (n=3,215 teachers), allowing for correlational and regression analyses of the variables.

The authors found that faculty trust in the principal was related to perceptions of both collegial and instructional leadership, as well as to factors of school climate such as teacher professionalism, academic press, and community engagement. Student achievement was also correlated with trust, principal leadership behaviors, and school climate. The authors found that both of the composite variables, principal behaviors and school climate, made significant independent contributions to explaining variance in student achievement and that together they explained 75 percent of the variance in achievement.

Limitations of the study include the use of a single form to collect participants’ responses that may have elevated the degree of correlations, as well as the exclusion of rural schools from the sample.

The findings of this study suggest that principals must foster and maintain trust in order to lead schools effectively. Importantly, trust has both interpersonal and task-oriented dimensions. Thus, principals must be prepared to engage collegially with teachers in ways that are consistently honest, open, and benevolent, while also dependably demonstrating sound knowledge and competent decision making associated with administering academic programs.

Situated in a conceptual framework of systems theory, this study explored the interplay of faculty trust in the principal, principal behavior, school climate, and student achievement. The findings suggest that it is necessary for principals to evidence both interpersonal and task-oriented behaviors in order to be trusted by teachers. Furthermore, the strength of the relationships suggests that schools will not be successful in fostering student learning without trustworthy school leaders who are skillful in cultivating academic press, teacher professionalism, and community engagement in their schools.

This research aims to add to the literature on Academic Optimism, a composite measure composed of teacher perceptions of trust in students, academic press, and collective efficacy by exploring a similar set of constructs from the student perceptive. The relationships between student trust in teachers, student perceptions of academic press, and student identification with school were examined as well as how they were individually and collectively related to student achievement in the schools in an urban school district.

This study assessed the perceptions of students in 49 elementary, middle, and high schools in one urban district. The measures used included the Student Trust in Teachers Survey (Adams and Forsyth), the Identification with School Questionnaire (Voelkl), and an adaptation of Academic Press (Hoy, Hannum and Tschannen‐Moran). Confirmatory factor analysis was employed to explore whether these three observed variables would form a latent variable called Student Academic Optimism. Finally, the relationship of Academic Optimism to student achievement, controlling for SES, was examined using SEM.

Strong and significant relationships were found between all three of the observed variables. A CFA analysis confirmed that they formed a latent variable the authors called Student Academic Optimism. Student Academic Optimism had a significant direct effect on student achievement (b=0.73, p<0.01) while SES (percent of students eligible for the free and reduced lunch program) had a significant negative effect on student achievement (b=−0.37, p<0.01). Together student academic optimism and SES explained 67 percent of the variance in student achievement with student academic optimism making the largest contribution to the explanation.

The findings that Student Academic Optimism was unrelated to SES and that Student Academic Optimism has a significant effect on achievement over and above the effects of SES and student demographic characteristics leads the authors to consider the possibility that SES may not be as influential as once thought when other conditions of the school environment are taken into consideration.

This study makes a unique contribution to the literature by focusing on the perspectives of students and by linking the measures of three important dynamics within schools to form a new construct: Student Academic Optimism.

This study explores the notion of collective teacher efficacy, a characteristic of schools that has emerged as a significant factor in school productivity. More specifically, this paper examines the construct validity and reliability of the Israeli Collective Teacher Efficacy Scale and explores variables that may influence teachers' sense of collective efficacy.

A sample of teacher respondents from 66 elementary schools (876 teachers) in Israel's central school district was used.

A comparison of the English (USA) version and the Hebrew (Israel) version of the Collective Teacher Sense of Efficacy Scale revealed marked similarities, supporting the constitutive meaning of this construct and the construct validity of its subscales. In the Israeli sample, urban school teachers tended to have a higher sense of collective efficacy than suburban school teachers. Teachers' collective sense of efficacy was unrelated to the demographic variables examined, including the workload of teachers, the longevity of teachers in that particular school setting, and the average number of years of teaching experience of a faculty.

The focus of this study was elementary schools, and it may be that a larger study across school levels would have revealed difference across them that play a significant role in shaping teachers' sense of collective efficacy.

The study strengthens the construct validity of the teachers' sense of collective efficacy scale and adds an international perspective to the small but growing body of research on teachers' collective sense of efficacy, which has been found to be significantly related to student achievement.

In this era of accountability and significant school reform, efforts to improve schools increasingly look to the principal to spearhead change efforts at the school level. Good principals are the cornerstones of good schools. Without a principal's leadership efforts to raise student achievement, a school cannot achieve its fundamental academic mission. The principal is seen as a key agent at the school level, initiating change by raising the level of expectations for both teachers and students. One promising, but largely unexplored avenue to understanding principal motivation and behavior is principals' sense of efficacy. Self‐efficacy is a perceived judgment of one's ability to effect change, which may be viewed as a foundational characteristic of an effective school leader. This paper reports on three studies that were conducted in the search for a reasonably valid and reliable measure to capture principals' sense of efficacy.

Reform efforts increasingly promote collaboration – admonishing principals to include both teachers and parents in democratic decision processes and encouraging teachers to work toward greater collaboration with their colleagues. The hypotheses that the level of collaboration was related to the level of trust was supported in bivariate correlational analyses. There was a significant link between collaboration with the principal and trust in the principal, collaboration with colleagues and trust in colleagues, and collaboration with parents and trust in parents. Canonical correlation reinforced the importance of trust in predicting the overall level of collaboration within a school. Among the set of trust variables, trust in clients was most influential in predicting the set of collaboration variables. Collaboration with parents was the most potent of the collaboration variables in this analysis. These finding argue for the importance of trust in nurturing collaborative relationships.

Accompanying the recent concern for the quality of our nation's educational infrastructure, a growing body of research connects the quality of school facilities to both student outcomes including achievement, behavior, and attitude as well as to teacher attitude and behavior. Less is known about the mechanisms of these relationships. This paper aims to examine the link between school building quality and student outcomes through the mediating influence of school climate. Results build upon those of a recent study that confirmed a link between the quality of school facilities and student achievement in both English and Mathematics, as well as the mediating role of school climate. This qualitative follow‐up study explores the complicated intricacies of how a school building's physical properties influence teaching and learning.

The study is structured according to a collective, instrumental case study design. Individual, focus group, walk‐through and photo‐interviews, as well as observations inform the inquiry. Two high‐poverty schools are identified from the earlier quantitative study because the ratings of the quality school facilities by their faculties fall within the upper quartile. These two schools, one urban and one rural, are selected purposefully for this study, maximizing learning from cases rich in information.

Results of the research indicate that ongoing interactions between the original design, the day‐to‐day reality of the built environment, and the occupants of that environment help to define the learning climate of these schools. Reciprocally, the climate helps to shape the interactions that take place, fostering environmental understanding, competence and control and supporting academic learning. From the data, several broad themes related to building quality emerge as central to this interaction between the built environment and building occupants, including movement, aesthetics, play of light, flexible and responsive classrooms, elbow room, and security.

Through the stories told by occupants of these two schools, we gain further understanding of the interactions between certain building conditions and design features and how these reinforce and enhance the social environment of school, helping to foster a sense of belonging within a place, a sense of control and competence, and a sense of collective commitment to the place and its purposes. As school designers balance considerations of durability with flexibility, the voices of these occupants may serve to argue for the inclusion of design features that allow occupants some measure of control over comfort and use factors. The broad themes related to building quality that emerge from the data include movement, aesthetics, the play of light, flexible and responsive classrooms, elbow room, as well as safety and security.

A growing body of research connecting the quality of school facilities to student performance accompanies recent efforts to improve the state of the educational infrastructure in the USA. Less is known about the mechanisms of these relationships. This paper seeks to examine the proposition that part of the explanation may be the mediating influence of school climate.

Teachers from 80 Virginia middle schools were surveyed employing measures including the School Climate Index, a seven‐item quality of school facilities scale, as well as three resource support items. Data on student SES and achievement were also gathered. Bivariate correlational analysis was used to explore the relationships between the quality of facilities, resource support, school climate, student SES, and student achievement. In addition, multiple regression was used to test school climate as a mediating variable between the quality of facilities and student achievement.

Results confirmed a link between the quality of school facilities and student achievement in English and mathematics. As well, quality facilities were significantly positively related to three school climate variables. Finally, results confirmed the hypothesis that school climate plays a mediating role in the relationship between facility quality and student achievement.

As we face fundamental issues of equity across schools and districts, leaders struggle to convince taxpayers of the need to invest in replacing and/or renovating inadequate facilities. Deeper understandings of the complicated interplay between the physical and social environments of school, and how these dynamics influence student outcomes, may help educators build a compelling case.