Search results

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.

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.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the relationships among academic optimism, community engagement, and student achievement in urban elementary schools across one district.

Data were collected from all 35 urban elementary schools across one district in Virginia, USA. Correlation, multiple regression, and factor analyses were used to test the hypotheses.

In schools where the faculty are optimistic that their students can succeed despite the obstacle of low socioeconomic status (SES) and where the community is engaged, students are more likely to achieve at higher levels. Findings of this study also supported that community engagement, collective efficacy, trust in clients, and academic press do act as predictors to collectively influence student achievement.

The Goddard measure for collective efficacy was replaced with one developed for more challenging settings such as urban schools.

Academic optimism and community engagement were found to work in ways that improve student achievement. Understanding the social contexts in classrooms and schools allows education leaders to work with faculty in examining current practice, in an effort to improve the educational outcomes for all students, even those who must overcome the obstacles to learning posed by their low SES.

With only one previous study of this construct in an urban elementary setting, the current study sought to test those findings in an effort to continue pushing this research agenda into urban settings.

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.

President Obama’s policies, while broad in scope, offer some specific attention to college and career readiness (CCR) and are necessary for urban youth to realize their career potentials. However, by primarily defining CCR in terms of academic achievement, many of the previously mentioned policies ignore the varied college access skills needed to ensure successful preparation for, enrollment in, and graduation from postsecondary institutions.

This chapter explores the current definition of CCR represented in the Obama administration’s policies, while also expanding the definition to include missing policy pieces related to college access.

The underutilization of school counselors and classroom teachers as college access facilitators who can expand CCR for urban schools is addressed. The paper discusses recent Obama administration initiatives and recommendations for urban schools and higher education institutions.

The administration initiatives and recommendations recently put in place by the Obama administration for urban schools and higher education institutions, if integrated within urban schools, may facilitate the realization of one of President Obama’s educational reform goals of ensuring that every student graduates from high school well prepared for college and a career.

Relatively limited attention has been paid to the academic needs of students with emotional and behavioral difficulties. Effective interventions are needed to support these students academically, behaviorally, and socially. The purpose of the concurrent studies reported here was to investigate the effectiveness of academic support in writing for fourth- and fifth-grade students (six boys, two girls) and second- and third-grade students (seven boys, one girl) with writing and behavioral difficulties. The Self-Regulated Strategy Development (SRSD) approach was implemented as a tier-2 intervention within a comprehensive, integrated three-tiered model of prevention including academic-, behavioral-, and social-skills components. Students learned an on-demand writing strategy for their state writing-competency test. Dependent measures included number of story writing elements, total number of words written, and writing quality. Fourth- and fifth-grade students who completed the intervention improved in total number of story elements. There were mixed results for the total number of words written and writing quality. Second- and third-grade students did not improve their total number of story elements, total words written, or writing quality. Students in both studies scored the intervention favorably, while there were mixed reactions from teachers. Findings, limitations, and suggestions for future research are discussed. Implications for the construct of evidence-based practice (EBP) are also explored, including concerns regarding frequent assessment of writing throughout intervention regardless of stage of instruction in the SRSD model.

This study is a quantitative exploration of a new construct the authors label as “academic culture (AC).” Treating it as generalized latent variable composed of academic press (AP), disciplinary climate (DC), and teachers’ use of instructional time, the purpose of this paper is to explore the potential of this construct to be a key mediator of school leaders’ influence on student learning. The study is guided by three hypotheses.

Responses by 856 elementary teachers from 70 schools to an online survey measured the three components of AC along with school leadership (SL). Provincial tests of writing, reading, and math were used as measures of student achievement (SA). Social economic status (SES) was used as control variable for the study. Data were summarized using descriptive statistics and correlations were calculated among all variables. Analyses included intra-class correlation analysis, regression equations, confirmatory factor analysis, and structural equation modeling.

Evidence confirmed the study’s three hypotheses: first, AP, DC, and instructional time formed a general latent construct, AC; second, AC explained a significant proportion of the variance in SA, controlling for student SES; and third, AC was a significant mediator of SL’s influence on SA. Concepts and measures of academic optimism (AO) and AC are compared in the paper and implications for practice and future research are outlined.

This first study of AC explored the relationship between AC and SA. Although at least two AO studies have included measures of distributed leadership, minimal attention has been devoted to actually testing the claim that AO is amenable to the influence of explicit leadership practices (as distinct from enabling school structures) and is a powerful mediator of SL effects on student learning. Addressing this limitation of AO research to date, the present study included a well-developed measure of leadership practices and assessed the value of AC as a mediator of such practices.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the relationship between high school students' curricular positions, their perceptions of the quality of their teachers, and school academic process variables on students' growth rates and ending achievement in mathematics and science.

Multilevel latent curve modeling is used to examine students' growth trajectories using the National Longitudinal Educational Study data.

Within schools, both student curricular positions and perceptions of teacher quality affect growth and achievement. More positive student perceptions of their teachers ascending across course profiles are found. The effects of perceived teacher quality on growth rates and ending achievement, however, are more consequential for students in weaker academic profiles than in stronger profiles. Between schools, academic process variables also influence outcomes. For example, individuals in schools where students collectively pursue more math and science have significantly higher growth rates than individuals in schools where lower percentages of students take these courses.

The paper's measures of teacher quality and curricular differentiation only serve as proxy measures for more thorough information that can be collected about within‐school teacher and curricular processes.

The results imply that efforts to increase student achievement will have to attack individual (e.g. poverty; early educational experiences; and course taking) and organizational (i.e. school structural redesign, curricular, and instructional processes) fronts simultaneously.

This paper extends the discussion of how internal curricular differentiation and student perceptions about teacher quality may intersect to influence student growth trajectories within and between schools.

This study aims to test the mediated effect of school climate in the relationship of principal time use (PTU) to student academic achievement using data from Singapore's 2011 Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS).

Capitalizing on the large-scale data, the study examined how Singapore principals distributed their time across 13 leadership activities and tested using structural equation modeling (SEM) how Singapore principals' time use was related to student achievement through molding intermediate school conditions, such as school climate.

The authors' findings suggest that Singaporean principals, when allocating time, generally emphasized (1) monitoring students' learning progress, (2) promoting school vision, (3) developing curricular goals and (4) monitoring teachers in areas related to curricular goals. Furthermore, after classifying the 13 principal activities into three broad domains, the authors find that Singaporean principals prioritize the domain of vision and goals over the other two domains – facilitating teaching and learning through a safe, positive school environment and problem-solving with teachers, as well as self and organizational improvement. Finally, the authors' SEM manifested a partial mediated model, suggesting principals' strategic time use could serve as a malleable factor in yielding optimal student outcomes through developing a positive school climate.

This study at present is one of the early attempts linking PTU, intermediate school conditions (e.g. school climate) and student outcomes using a mediated design and corresponding statistical modeling.

As they operate in complex schools principals must allocate their attention to numerous responsibilities. This paper seeks to ask three questions: how do principals allocate their attention across major realms of responsibility; to what extent do principals in different contexts emphasize different realms of responsibility; and to what extent do individual attributes affect how principals allocate their attention across realms?

A cluster analysis is applied to data from a daily log of principal practices to identify principals who allocate their attention across major realms of responsibility in similar ways. With the three groups identified in the cluster analysis a discriminant analysis is then used to examine the individual attributes of the principals and the contexts within which these groups work to identify those individual characteristics and contextual conditions that best predict each principal's cluster membership.

The data from the log indicate that principals are not as fragmented across numerous realms of responsibility as previous research suggests. Some principals do spend considerable time on instructional leadership. The cluster analysis revealed three groups: “Eclectic” Leaders (their activities are distributed more evenly across different activities); Instructional Leaders (they focused most on Instructional Leadership); and Student Leaders (they emphasized student affairs). In the paper's discriminant analyses no individual attributes distinguished amongst the three types of principals; only contextual conditions predicted membership.

The results point to the influence that context plays on school principals' practice; principals appear to prioritize and focus their actions under more challenging contextual conditions. The next step in the analysis is to determine how the leadership clusters and principal practices relate to important school outcomes.

The paper provides useful information on influences on school principals' practice.