Research for Teachers

When our English Department began moving toward a Readers/Writers Workshop model, I was excited by the possibilities.

Our school had committed significant resources to the change. We were working with an external consultant. The approach was grounded in research, and there was a clear expectation that it would improve our pedagogy.

And I was Head of Department.

There was one uncomfortable problem: I had never taught this way before.

I remember feeling nervous about leading an instructional change that I was still learning to implement myself. Having a leadership title did not magically give me confidence in a teaching practice I had never experienced.

But gradually, something changed.

Confidence Came Through Experience

Our consultant didn’t simply give us a model and tell us to implement it.

We explored the research behind different practices and why they mattered. We learned which elements were important to preserve and where we could adapt the approach to our own students and context.

Then we started trying things.

I became more deliberate about making intended learning clear. I reduced my own talk time. I built more opportunities for students to work independently while I conferred with individuals and small groups.

Some things worked better than others.

But over time, I began seeing evidence that these changes could improve my students’ learning. More importantly, I began to feel increasingly capable of making the model work in my own classroom.

Bandura’s (1993) research on self-efficacy helps explain why.

Our beliefs about our capabilities develop partly through mastery experiences: actually experiencing ourselves succeeding at something challenging. Efficacy can also develop through observing others, credible encouragement and our emotional experiences as we approach a task.

For me, the distinction is important.

I wasn’t becoming more confident because someone told me I was capable of teaching differently.

I was becoming more confident because I was experiencing myself doing it.

From “I Can” to “We Can”

But I wasn’t having these experiences alone.

My colleagues were trying the same practices in their classrooms. We talked about what was working and what wasn’t. We observed different approaches, shared resources and adapted what we were learning to different students and courses.

Individual mastery experiences gradually became collective ones.

This is where I see the connection between self-efficacy and collective efficacy.

Self-efficacy asks: Can I do this?

Collective efficacy asks: Can we do this?

Research suggests that both matter. Teachers’ efficacy beliefs influence their willingness to experiment with and persist in new instructional practices (Tschannen-Moran & McMaster, 2009), while collective efficacy concerns a faculty’s shared belief in its capacity to positively influence student learning (Goddard et al., 2015).

Over several years, our conversations changed.

We were no longer simply talking about a new teaching model that we were supposed to implement. We had accumulated experiences of using particular practices, seeing students respond, adjusting what wasn’t working and learning from one another.

The model was becoming ours.

The Leadership Lesson

Looking back, this experience changed how I think about professional learning.

It is tempting to believe that if we provide teachers with strong research, good professional development and sufficient resources, instructional change will follow.

Those things matter.

But professional learning alone does not create efficacy.

Teachers also need opportunities to try, observe, receive feedback, adjust and experience success. And if we want collective efficacy to develop, they need opportunities to make sense of those experiences together.

As a leader, that shifts my question from:

Have teachers received enough professional development?

to:

What experiences are helping teachers develop evidence that they can actually do this?

Because if I want a team to genuinely believe “we can do this,” I need to help create conditions in which teachers repeatedly experience both:

“I can do this.”

and

“We are getting better at this together.”

References

Bandura, A. (1993). Perceived self-efficacy in cognitive development and functioning. Educational Psychologist, 28(2), 117–148.

Goddard, R., Goddard, Y., Sook Kim, E., & Miller, R. (2015). A theoretical and empirical analysis of the roles of instructional leadership, teacher collaboration, and collective efficacy beliefs in support of student learning. American Journal of Education, 121(4), 501–530.

Tschannen-Moran, M., & McMaster, P. (2009). Sources of self-efficacy: Four professional development formats and their relationship to self-efficacy and implementation of a new teaching strategy. The Elementary School Journal, 110(2), 228–245.