Recent research examining collective efficacy beliefs has generated a plethora of promising findings about their impact on group functioning. However, questions regarding the nature of collective efficacy beliefs across diverse educational organizations and theoretical constructs are understudied in this area of research. Therefore, the current study examines the relationship between collective efficacy beliefs and building group capacity. Self-reported data were collected from participants involved in a 10-month collaborative effort to enhance their proficiency in giving more effective presentations in order to strengthen their divisions’ capacity to improve educational achievement in schools. This top-down approach to building capacity is common, yet challenging to develop and evaluate, especially for organizations consisting of multiple infrastructures. Research findings using separate simple linear regression analyses suggest that perceived collective efficacy highly predicts group capacity, as it accounted for nearly 76% of the variance in self-reported group capacity. In addition, vicarious experience was shown to highly predict collective efficacy beliefs and group capacity. Likewise, perceived autonomy support strongly predicted group capacity, however did not significantly predict collective efficacy beliefs, which has been implied in the recent literature (Goddard, Hoy & Woolfolk Hoy, 2004; Brinson & Steiner, 2007). These findings provide a foundation for future collective efficacy belief research and capacity building efforts in the nonprofit education sector. / text

This article presents the qualitative analysis of public teachers’ interviews who worked at low socioeconomic schools. We found that school contexts condition teachers’ beliefs about students’ performance and achievement. Through the emphasis on students’ difficulties, teachers reduce their responsibility for student learning. However, institutional activities oriented to teachers’ change may be related to strengthen collective efficacy beliefs which diminish their beliefs about negative conditions of low socioeconomic contexts, and motivate teachers’ pedagogical change. / En este artículo se presenta el análisis cualitativo de entrevistas a docentes de cuatro escuelas públicas ubicadas en sectores desfavorecidos. Se encontró que el contexto socioeconómico de las escuelas influye en las creencias de los docentes. Los docentes enfatizan las dificultades y los problemas de los estudiantes y explican cómo su condición social y económica está directamente relacionada a dichas dificultades. De esa forma, reducen su responsabilidad frente al aprendizaje de los alumnos. Sin embargo, al parecer, algunas prácticas institucionales orientadas al cambio docente podrían estar jugando un rol importante en el fortalecimiento de creencias colectivas de eficacia que contrarrestan sus creencias sobre las condiciones negativas de los contextos en los que trabajan e impulsan procesos de cambio en sus prácticas pedagógicas.