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This study investigated teacher beliefs and organizational climate constructs of collective efficacy, faculty trust, academic emphasis, enabling bureaucracy, and mindfulness as antecedents for implemented professional development. Researchers previously combined collective efficacy, faculty trust, and academic emphasis into academic optimism. Using Conscious Discipline as professional development and book study as delivery, in this mixed methodology study, 489 teachers in 17 suburban elementary schools completed surveys measuring organizational climate constructs, teacher beliefs about classroom management, and self-reported degree of imlementation. Morning greeting and classroom walkthrough observations collected evidence of implementation. Sixteen focus group teachers from four elementary schools explained the degree of implementation. This study found that (a) Teacher and school demographic data correlated with organizational climate constructs; (b) Teacher beliefs and faculty mindfulness explained 65.7% of variance in self-reported degree of implementation; and (c) Socioeconomic status, book club participation, and teacher beliefs explained 77.1% of variance in observation degree of implementation. / Ph. D.

Principal Academic Optimism is an hypothesized latent construct that has strong theoretical foundations in both educational research and educational psychology. Academic Optimism derives from research on school academic optimism and teacher academic optimism, which originated via Hoys, Tarters, and Woolfolk Hoys (2006a; 2006b) merger of school climate research with research on learned optimism, stemming from Martin Seligmans (1998, 2006) research on positive psychology. Principal Academic Optimism expands upon discoveries of School Academic Optimism and Teacher Academic Optimism. The theoretical framework of Principal Academic Optimism is built upon a strong research foundation of the organizational health model, social capital theory, social cognitive theory and positive psychology. The purpose of this research is to revise Riegel's (2012) Principal Academic Optimism Scale, thereby creating and testing a comprehensive measure of Principal Academic Optimism. The questionnaire used to accomplish this goal was a revised version of Riegel's Principal Academic Optimism Scale and Tschannen-Moran's and Gareis's (2004) Principal Trust Scale. By incorporating a measure for principal trust in faculty with a measure of principal trust in clients (parents and students), a more comprehensive measure of Principal Academic Optimism was validated and found reliable (α = 0.908). Perhaps the most compelling finding of the study was the significant negative relationship between principals' perception of trust in clients whose schools have high percentages of students receiving free and reduced price lunches (r = -0.444; p < 0.05). Principals with high percentages of free and reduced price lunch rates explained 72.203% of the variance in principals' self-reported perception of trust in clients. Principals of schools with 61%-80% or 81%+ percentages of free and reduced price lunch rates reported lower levels of trust in clients (parents and students). / Ed. D.

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The purpose of this intrinsic case study was to show how Expert Team Theory can explain the application of goal orientated rehearsal strategies which were designed for this study for an ad hoc ensemble at the School of Music of the North-West University, Potchefstroom, South Africa. The case study was considered as the most suitable research method to investigate the ways in which goal-orientated rehearsal strategies influence dynamics during rehearsals of a new music ensemble, and the experiences by the members of their interaction, because this approach allowed me to investigate these strategies in a real world environment. This study was born out of an interest in rehearsal strategies and in different ways to structure music rehearsals. The characteristics of a new music ensemble determined the use of Expert Team Theory as the theoretical basis for the design of the goalorientated rehearsal strategies. These characteristics correspond well with that of an expert team as “a set of interdependent team members, each of whom possesses unique and expert-level knowledge, skills, and experience related to task performance, and who adapt, coordinate, and cooperate as a team, thereby producing sustainable and repeatable team functioning at superior or at least nearoptimal levels of performance” (Salas et al., 2006:439-440). Based on interviews with the participants and the observations of video recordings of the rehearsals, the results show that interpreting the data through the theoretical lens of Expert Team Theory enabled me to explain the rehearsal process as a dynamic confluence of experiences created through the interaction of the ensemble members who grew through increasing cooperation and coordination to resemble an expert team. Their sense of collectiveness and their trust coupled with strong leadership allowed the success of the strategy of prebrief-performance-debrief. The ensemble developed progressively clearer shared mental models and understandings of roles and responsibilities. A clear, valued and shared vision helped them to manage and optimize performance outcomes. The findings are also interrogated in terms of cooperative learning to further explain the web-like way in which different themes developed. This led to a discussion of the limitations of this study and suggestions for further research. / MA (Performance), North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2015

The purpose of this intrinsic case study was to show how Expert Team Theory can explain the application of goal orientated rehearsal strategies which were designed for this study for an ad hoc ensemble at the School of Music of the North-West University, Potchefstroom, South Africa. The case study was considered as the most suitable research method to investigate the ways in which goal-orientated rehearsal strategies influence dynamics during rehearsals of a new music ensemble, and the experiences by the members of their interaction, because this approach allowed me to investigate these strategies in a real world environment. This study was born out of an interest in rehearsal strategies and in different ways to structure music rehearsals. The characteristics of a new music ensemble determined the use of Expert Team Theory as the theoretical basis for the design of the goalorientated rehearsal strategies. These characteristics correspond well with that of an expert team as “a set of interdependent team members, each of whom possesses unique and expert-level knowledge, skills, and experience related to task performance, and who adapt, coordinate, and cooperate as a team, thereby producing sustainable and repeatable team functioning at superior or at least nearoptimal levels of performance” (Salas et al., 2006:439-440). Based on interviews with the participants and the observations of video recordings of the rehearsals, the results show that interpreting the data through the theoretical lens of Expert Team Theory enabled me to explain the rehearsal process as a dynamic confluence of experiences created through the interaction of the ensemble members who grew through increasing cooperation and coordination to resemble an expert team. Their sense of collectiveness and their trust coupled with strong leadership allowed the success of the strategy of prebrief-performance-debrief. The ensemble developed progressively clearer shared mental models and understandings of roles and responsibilities. A clear, valued and shared vision helped them to manage and optimize performance outcomes. The findings are also interrogated in terms of cooperative learning to further explain the web-like way in which different themes developed. This led to a discussion of the limitations of this study and suggestions for further research. / MA (Performance), North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2015

The overrepresentation of racial and ethnic minorities in crime has been an issue of debate. Some evidence, however, has shown that racial differences in offending are largely accounted for by economic disadvantage. Using data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (n = 4,290), the relationship between race and delinquency was examined looking at social disorganization factors. It was hypothesized that there would be racial and ethnic differences in delinquency and that these differences would be accounted for by social disorganization factors, specifically collective efficacy and economic disadvantage. The results show that compared to White adolescents Hispanic adolescents have increased odds of nonviolent and violent delinquency, and Black adolescents have increased odds of violent delinquency. Contrary to expectations, social disorganization factors did not account for the racial and ethnic differences in delinquency. Unexpectedly, higher levels of collective efficacy actually increased the odds of violent delinquency.

The purpose of this study is to research the relationships among leadership style, team cohesion, collective efficacy, organizational justice, and organizational capital. This study used the questionnaires as a measurement tool to research, and the questionnaires samples was drawn out from CSBC Corporation, Taiwan all engineers, managements, engineer assistants, and management assistants, the writer released 460 questionnaires to them, eventually ended up effective 375 questionnaires with 82.06% return rate. The findings are as follows. 1. The transformational leadership has positive influence on intellectual capital including human capital, structural capital, and social capital, and the transactional leadership have positive influence on structural capital, but have not any influence on human capital and social capital. 2. Team cohesion merely has partial medium on the relationships among transformational leadership, human capital and structural capital; Team cohesion has full medium on the relationships between transformational leadership and social capital. 3. Collective efficacy has full medium on the relationships between transformational leadership and human capital; Collective efficacy merely has partial medium on the relationships among transformational leadership, structural capital and social capital. 4. Organizational justice has full medium on the relationships between transformational leadership and human capital; Organizational justice merely has partial medium on the relationships among transformational leadership, structural capital and social capital.

This thesis deals with domain of teacher collective efficacy, that is related to the self-efficacy concept, both are part of the social cognitive theory from Albert Bandura. The theoretical part first summarizes basic theoretical background of self-efficacy. Next part deals with topic of teacher self-efficacy that played important role in forming of the concept of teacher collective efficacy and its measurements. Then it summarizes information and results of research relevant to the new emergent concept of teacher collective efficacy. The empirical part describes the qualitative research that was carried out. Its goals were to map the concept of teacher collective efficacy among teachers in primary and secondary schools and how they reflect on this concept and then to suggest new possible model and possible directions for creating a teacher collective efficacy scale for Czech teachers. Research method were half- structured interviews with 8 teachers and the use of thematic analysis. It was found out that interview contained several common themes. After comparing it with theoretical conception of collective efficacy, modified model of teacher collective efficacy was suggested with 4 main themes: support, collective team, pupils and parents. KEYWORDS Self-efficacy, collective efficacy, qualitative...