- Title
- An exploration of the prevalence, drivers and effect of collective teacher efficacy in subject departments in Catholic secondary schools in New South Wales
- Creator
- Buscall, Deborah
- Relation
- University of Newcastle Research Higher Degree Thesis
- Resource Type
- thesis
- Date
- 2025
- Description
- Research Doctorate - Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
- Description
- Academics have undertaken considerable research into what happens within schools to promote and support student learning. Their findings indicated that the preparation of those who teach and lead in school matters, and that the pedagogies teachers use and the support they receive matters. However, less has been learned about the importance of shared beliefs that exist among groups of teachers and the impact of those beliefs on improving student learning at the subject department level. Most research on collective teacher efficacy has been conducted at the whole school level. This study explored collective teacher efficacy or teachers’ confidence in their ability to influence student success, and its relationship to the comparative learning gain of students at the subject department level in secondary schools. Comparative learning gain involved comparing the learning gain of students in one school with the learning gain of students with similar ability in another school. In this study, the researcher explored comparative learning gain in individual subject departments across four secondary schools in one Catholic diocese in Sydney, New South Wales. Study participants in this study were teachers and students from these four schools which, were included because they demonstrated comparative learning gain in one or more subjects over five years in the NSW Higher School Certificate (HSC). Teacher participants completed the short version of the Collective Teacher Efficacy Survey (Goddard 2000), which also included a number of open-ended questions. The researcher then interviewed teachers in each subject area as a group and recorded and transcribed their responses to the semi-structured questions. Similarly, the researcher conducted group interviews with a sample of students from each subject area and recorded and transcribed their responses. The survey results were analysed as descriptive statistics while the interview responses of the teachers and students were analysed using NVIVO qualitative data analyses software. Analysis of the teacher survey responses revealed strong collective teacher efficacy across the four focus schools. The teachers indicated that they believed that all students could learn with different levels of intervention, and this belief appeared to influence how they planned lessons and worked together to improve student learning outcomes. Highly committed to student learning, teacher participants noted they were prepared to work together to overcome difficulties their students faced. Positive productive teacher–student learning relationships were evident from teacher and student interviews. Students stated that their teachers were committed to improving their learning and recognised their responsibility to work positively with their teachers. The five enablers that supported collective teacher efficacy were found to be embedded in the culture of the subject departments: supportive leadership at the whole school and subject department level, consensual goal setting, cohesive teacher knowledge, reflective teacher practice, and empowered teachers (Donohoo et al., 2020). However, four additional enabling conditions emerged from the study: high expectations, a positive classroom environment, explicit teaching, and teacher beliefs about student learning. These findings changed the narrative about improving student learning outcomes in a secondary school context from a focus at the whole school level to the strength of the collective efficacy of teachers at the subject department level. Study results also moved the discussion from student achievement to comparative learning gain, which allowed an exploration of the human dimension of teaching. This exploration involved the impact of teacher beliefs, self-efficacy, motivation and identity on student learning at the subject department level.
- Subject
- collective teacher efficacy; Catholic secondary schools; teachers; New South Wales
- Identifier
- http://hdl.handle.net/1959.13/1520214
- Identifier
- uon:57446
- Rights
- Copyright 2025 Deborah Buscall
- Language
- eng
- Full Text
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| Thumbnail | File | Description | Size | Format | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| View Details Download | ATTACHMENT01 | Thesis | 852 KB | Adobe Acrobat PDF | View Details Download | ||
| View Details Download | ATTACHMENT02 | Abstract | 148 KB | Adobe Acrobat PDF | View Details Download |