The ever-changing role of public-school principals is complex and overwhelming. Because instructional leadership impacts teaching practices and student achievement, this important principal role should be cultivated with principals having sufficient time to engage as instructional leaders. A generic qualitative inquiry methodology was used to explore how the size of an administrative team impacts principals' instructional leadership self-efficacy. Exploration was achieved through 10 one-on-one, semi-structured interviews and one focus group interview. The data suggest that team size does impact an administrator's ability to serve as an instructional leader. Participants reported that larger teams provided more time for working with individual teachers and collaborative teams. Although interviewed administrators did not always abandon instructional leadership when there was insufficient time, they did often sacrifice personal time to fit it in. Administrators did not believe that they had enough time to be instructional leaders, regardless of the team size, but they shared that there was more time to develop their instructional leadership principal self-efficacy when working on larger teams. Larger teams also provided administrators with greater diversity of perspectives and experiences, which they said cultivated their self-efficacy. Consequently, an opportunity exists for district administrators to consider the specific needs of each campus, the exhaustive list of duties given to campus administrators, and the importance of instructional leadership when making staffing decisions about the number of administrators allotted to each campus.

U.S. public education is regulated by accountability policies designed to ensure that all students, and those who are responsible for their education, are held to high academic standards. Accountability policies at the federal and state level have unintended consequences for educators, with principals and teachers experiencing increased job stress, decreased job satisfaction, and increased numbers of teachers and principals leaving the profession. The construct of efficacy may be a critical component in meeting the established accountability demands. Perception of self-efficacy is one’s personal belief in one’s ability to achieve a desired outcome. Similarly, perception of collective efficacy is a system-level construct, the collective belief of a group of individuals that, together, they can achieve a desired outcome. In general, efficacy beliefs are shaped by four primary sources: mastery experiences, verbal or social persuasion, vicarious experiences, and physiological or affective states. Beliefs of efficacy are also contextual in nature, varying across situations or settings. Within the field of education, beliefs of teacher and principal self-efficacy and of collective teacher efficacy have been shown to positively impact teacher and principal behaviors as well as student achievement. Given the context of state accountability policies in the area of literacy and the known relationship between efficacy beliefs and student achievement, this study examined the following two research questions: (RQ1) How do principals feel about their abilities to lead their schools? and (RQ2) What is the relationship between principals’ perceptions of their abilities to lead their schools and collective teacher efficacy perceptions? The target population for the study included public elementary school principals and teachers from Illinois, Iowa, Missouri, and Wisconsin. Consenting participants completed a two-part survey, including demographic information and the Principal Sense of Efficacy Scale (Tschannen-Moran & Gareis, 2004) for participating principals or Collective Teacher Beliefs Scale (Tschannen-Moran & Barr, 2004) for participating teachers. Variables for analysis included: gender of the principal, the principal’s years at the school, school size, school type (rural, suburban, urban), socioeconomic status (SES) based on free or reduced lunch (FRL), special education (IEP), English Language Learners (ELL), race/ethnicity, student achievement based on percent of students scoring proficient on the state English Language Arts/Reading assessment, principal self-efficacy perceptions, and collective teacher efficacy perceptions. The researcher employed descriptive statistics, t-tests, one-way ANOVAs, correlational analysis, and hierarchical multiple regression analyses to answer the research questions. Results indicated principal self-efficacy perceptions were significantly different based on school type (rural, suburban, urban) and free or reduced lunch (FRL) but not by other demographic variables of the principal or the school. In addition, principal self-efficacy perceptions were positively correlated with collective teacher efficacy perceptions (r= .435, p< .05). Furthermore, perceptions of principal self-efficacy were not a significant predictor of collective teacher efficacy perceptions. Years of experience in the building of the principal was the only significant predictor of perceptions of collective teacher efficacy.

The intent of this non-experimental correlational and comparative study was to determine the extent to which self-efficacy predicts student achievement as well as the differences between the self-efficacy beliefs of principals in turnaround and fully accredited schools at the elementary, middle, and high school levels in one urban Virginia school division. Principal leaders should be selected based on expertise related to their assigned school needs and challenges (Murphy, 2010a). Turnaround schools in the process of improvement present a distinct challenge and require individualized applications of effective leadership practices (Leithwood, Harris and Strauss, 2010). Principal self-efficacy is defined as, "...a judgment of his or her own capabilities to structure a particular course of action in order to produce desired outcomes in the school he or she leads" (Tschannen-Moran and Gareis, 2004, p. 573). Overall principal self-efficacy as well as efficacy for management, instructional leadership, and moral leadership were measured using the Principal Sense of Efficacy Scale (PSES) (Tschannen-Moran and Gareis, 2004). The Virginia Standards of Learning (SOL) assessment results for reading and mathematics, specifically the overall school pass rates by subject, were used as indicators of student achievement. The researcher sought to examine the usefulness of measuring self-efficacy as a potential method for identifying and assigning principals to specific school contexts based on any relationships and differences revealed by the data. A hierarchical multiple regression analysis was used to predict student achievement in reading and mathematics from overall principal self-efficacy and the three principal efficacy subscales while controlling for poverty. An independent samples t-test was conducted to compare the self-efficacy of principals at turnaround and fully accredited schools. Analysis of the predictive relationship between principal self-efficacy and student achievement in reading and mathematics failed to reveal significant findings. Comparative analysis of the mean self-efficacy for turnaround and fully accredited school principals further failed to reveal statistically significant differences. Calculated effect size of the differences between the groups indicated a medium effect. Implications for practice and recommendations for future research were developed from the findings. / Ed. D.