The impact of teacher collaboration on teachers' sense of efficacy.

The purpose of this study was to determine the role of teacher teaming in school improvement efforts as reflected by teachers' expressions of their sense of efficacy and collaborative efforts. The exploratory, descriptive study involves 37 teachers in a Southwestern elementary school. Three instruments were used to gather data on teachers' sense of efficacy, team planning activities, and teacher perceptions and attitudes about collaboration in the major site: Teacher Efficacy Survey, a collaboration questionnaire, and voluntary interviews. The major findings show that: (1) Teachers express fairly high confidence in efficacy, especially with regard to their potential to impact student progress. (2) Teachers disagree with statements that the home is the sole determiner of student learning and progress. (3) Teachers report a high frequency of collaboration. This tendency was especially strong in the area of communication with other teachers and actual planning/teaching activities. (4) Variations in satisfaction levels are expressed by teachers in relation to collaborative team planning. (5) Teachers express a medium satisfaction level toward collaborative team planning. (6) Teachers perceive a feeling of empowerment based on involvement in decision making and communication. (7) Teachers do not perceive a positive or negative relationship with the district's organizational demands for teaming and express feelings of powerlessness and irrelevancy. (8) Teachers' perceptions toward student learning are positively influenced by collaborative team planning. (9) The evolution of the collaborative team planning project at the major site has progressed in four distinct phases. The major implication of this study is that it is necessary to foster and promote teacher collaboration in collegial activities to enhance their sense of efficacy toward student learning during school improvement or restructuring processes