Thesis (Ed. D.)--University of North Texas, Dec., 2008. / Title from title page display. Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (Ph.D.) in Educational Leadership--University of Maine, 2004. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 114-125).

Abstract The purpose of this study was to examine the relationship between Louisiana Principals’ self-efficacy beliefs and student achievement. This study was grounded in the research of Bandura’s model of triadic reciprocal causation and more recent research on principals’ self-efficacy beliefs. Using the Principals’ Sense of Efficacy Scale (PSES) (Tschannen-Moran & Gareis, 2004) measures of principals’ self-efficacy were collected and analyzed for (1) instructional leadership, (2) management, and (3) moral leadership. Principals across the state of Louisiana were emailed a link to the PSES and were asked to provide the names of their schools and asked for the number of years they had served as principal at their current school. Principals with two or more years were allowed to continue and complete the PSES. Three hundred eleven principals completed the PSES. Two years of student achievement reports [indicating Assessment Indices (AI)], published by the Louisiana Department of Education, were available for 271 of the 311 respondents. Pearson correlational analyses were used to determine relationships between variables. This study found no statistically significant relationships between management, and moral leadership efficacy and change in AI over a two-year period. However, there was a small (p = 0.047), but statistically significant (R2 = 0.010) relationship between instructional leadership efficacy and change in AI over a two-year period. The researcher recommends that the following steps be taken in future research seeking to determine the relationship between instructional leadership efficacy and change in AI: 1) exploration of data collection by means other than self-reporting, 2) use of student-level value-added data rather than the cohort-level data available here, and 3) use of a larger and more diverse sample of principals. Keywords: Principals, self-efficacy beliefs, or principals’ self-efficacy beliefs