The Relationships Among Behavior, Teacher Efficacy, Academic Achievement and Cultural Considerations: Accentuating the Positive

The goals of School Wide Positive Behavior Support (SWPBS) are to create safe school environments and maintain positive school culture that supports enriching behavioral and academic outcomes for students (Chityo & May, 2011). Teachers with increased self-efficacy levels believe their teaching makes a difference and they can affect how students learn; whereas, teachers with low efficacy believe their teaching has little influence on students and they cannot manage students (Ross & Horner, 2007). If SWPBS is effective, benefits might include improved teacher efficacy (Ross & Horner, 2007). Additionally, in longitudinal studies, relationships have been shown between SWPBS and increased academic achievement scores on annual high stakes testing in math and reading (Simonsen et al., 2012). The purpose of this study is to determine whether relationships exist among teacher efficacy, academic achievement, and school wide positive behavior support implementation. This study examined five elementary and one middle school implementing SWPBS and two elementary schools not implementing SWPBS in two suburban school districts in the southwestern United States to determine if teachers perceive themselves as more efficacious in schools that implemented SWPBS, and if group academic achievement scores on the STAAR would be more advanced on schools that implemented SWPBS. It was hypothesized that the schools’ level of adherence to SWPBS principles would be associated with higher teacher efficacy and achievement scores. Results were analyzed to determine if relationships exist among level of SWPBS implementation, teacher efficacy, and academic achievement. No significant findings were found among SWPBS, teacher efficacy and academic achievement scores