[Ous-lp-rp13] EDAD 6020, Answer to Question # 3

[Matney, Mary]

I will begin with the level of collective efficacy in my building, because I truly believe that collective efficacy has a greater impact on a school than self-efficacy alone. Every teacher in the building can have a high level of self-efficacy, but if you are missing the collective efficacy it won’t make as much of a positive influence on the building as a whole. When the entire building, teachers and administrators alike, believe that they are working together, as a united group, for the betterment of all the students in the building then you will see the greatest effect of efficacy. With that said, unfortunately at this point, I believe there is quite a divide in my building with collective efficacy. I believe that, for the most part, we all believe in each other and are supportive of one another; however, sadly I don’t feel that we all feel believed in by certain members of the administration. Because of this, we have learned to rely more on each other to reach that level of collective efficacy. We have had several administrators, all of which have had major differences in personalities and styles, in a relatively short amount of time, so we have basically had to guide ourselves and band together to develop our own personal system and just tweak it to meet the ever-changing demands of the administration. The high turn-over, and the effect on my building is actually the biggest reason I chose to pursue this program.



I believe self-efficacy is somewhat a prerequisite to being a classroom teacher. Why else would we voluntarily walk into a room of 25+ small, opinionated, curious, energized, lovely humans unless we believed we could make a difference? In my building there are teachers, like myself, who have such a high level of self-efficacy that it is apparent, and they don’t need anyone cheering them on; and on the flip-side, there are a few teachers who need that pat on the back, and the reassurance that they are doing a good job. I am reminded of one event my grade-level puts on each year: “A Night at the Wax Museum”. It’s a living research assignment where students choose an influential person, living or dead, to research, represent in a living wax museum, and deliver an oral presentation. So many standards are covered by doing this project, the students absolutely knock it out the park each year, and I couldn’t begin the measure the amount of learning that takes place. This year my team was so disheartened that our administrator not only refused to walk through the event, or tell the students what a great job they did, but instead at the end of our TBT meeting the same day of our event, he gave us a critique of something we needed to be doing better with: being at our doors in the morning to greet the primary students. This seemingly small request was not taken well by my teammates; they were devastated and I could feel what it did to what I now understand to be their self-efficacy. As I said, a little pat on the back would have gone a long way to build not only my teammates’ self-efficacy, but it would have done wonders for the collective efficacy as well.



There are no doubt some major changes that need to be made in order to improve the level of collective efficacy in my building. Until that time comes I know that by relying on each other, as we have been doing, when the right person steps into that position, with the right attitude, personality, and leadership qualities, he/she will be gaining a group of individuals who will be unstoppable.

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