Collective Teacher Efficacy: The Power of High Performance Teaching Teams

With Kurt Goodwin, Lead Principal, CQ Region

"Accomplishing the maximum impact on student learning depends on teams of teachers working together.” John Hattie

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High Performance Schools are places where every student and every staff member can flourish. This by definition means we must seek to not only maximise both the wellbeing and learning of students but also maximise the wellbeing and learning of staff.

As John Hattie points out, it is ‘teams’ of teachers working together effectively which maximise the impact on student learning. When teams of teachers are working together in High Performance Teams they achieve extraordinary results with their students AND experience extraordinary levels of support and feedback. 

It is this High Performance Teams environment that creates the shared experiences necessary for building Collective Teacher Efficacy – the single largest factor influencing student achievement with an effect size of 1.57 - almost 4 times greater than the 0.4 minimum threshold for significance.

Collective Teacher Efficacy is defined as the collective belief of teachers in their ability to positively impact upon student learning. According to Bandura (1986, 1997) there are four sources of information fundamental to the development of Collective Teacher Efficacy: (1) Mastery Experience (2) Social Persuasion, (3) Vicarious Experience, and (4) Affective States.

In this article, we want to unpack the process of building High Performance Teaching Teams and explore how the activities of High Performance Teaching Teams create the four sources of information required to maximise Collective Teacher Efficacy.

Building High Performance Teaching Teams 

When we work with groups of teachers to build High Performance Teaching Teams they develop explicit ‘ways of working’ to maximise their engagement and support as a team AND maximise their ability to set and achieve their quality teaching and learning goals.

These explicit ways of working are organised around the 4 KPIs of High Performance Teams and then codified and displayed on a teaching team data wall (which is more often than not a portable whiteboard as opposed to an actual wall).

Every teaching team has it's own team data wall AND key documents from this wall are also displayed on the ‘whole of school learning wall’ (see example from Mt Archer State School below). The 'teaching team data wall' becomes a ready reference within the team to promote consistent supportive behaviours and reinforce a disciplined approach to achieving their quality teaching and learning goals. The 'whole of school learning wall' is a ready reference for both student learning goals and important teaching team specific information such as team profiles and team goals which need to be taken into consideration for collaborative improvement groups made up of members of different teaching teams across the school.

The Activity Cycle of High Performance Teaching Teams

Establishing their  ‘ways of working’ and team data wall is just the first step in building High Performance Teaching Teams. The Activity Cycle and Team Meeting Strategy are the keys to ensuring  this ‘wall paper’ remains ‘living wallpaper’ (a great turn of phrase from Lyn Sharrett). 

The Activity Cycle

In High Performance Teaching Teams, they not only meet regularly as teams (see next section) they also engage in huddles, buddy check-ins, do PD together, complete a regular wellbeing pulse and update their data wall as progress is made on their quality teaching and learning goals.

The Teaching Team Meeting Strategy

High Performance Teaching Teams (HPTTs) in primary, secondary and special education contexts all use the same best practice meeting system comprised of an update tool, comprehensive yet flexible agenda which ensures the right mix of inclusive, supportive, proactive, strategic and accountable meeting items are discussed,  a meeting chair and meeting moderator and a live note system which feeds into the team data wall. 

You can learn more about the Teaching Team Meeting Strategy here (click).

A Word About Meeting Frequency

As we’ve discussed previously the literature seems pretty clear about weekly 60 minute meetings being optimal but in Australian public schools there are constraint around how many meetings teachers are required to attend each week leading to team meeting schedules being compromised to fit in other required staff meetings etc.  Where this occurs teaching team meetings should be scheduled at least back to back to enable continuity between meetings before other meetings disrupt the cycle. The table below shows an example of how to maximise teaching team meeting time in an Australian state high school and primary school context where one hour per week is the maximum time provisioned for teacher meeting activity of any type.

HPTT Activity & Collective Teacher Efficacy

So now we know what HPTTs are, what activities they engage in and how they behave, let’s examine how this activity and behaviour leads to increased collective teacher efficacy through Bandura’s ‘four sources of information’. Kurt Goodwin, (previously the Principal at Mt Archer State School) has been using the HPTT system for several years - hard wiring each of the collective teacher efficacy factors into his HPT Activity Cycle (see below) enabling all staff to clearly understand how working as High Performance Teaching Teams builds Collective Teacher Efficacy…

Mastery Experience - Intentional Practice

Mastery Experience - Intentional Practice: Teams of teachers will inevitably experience successes and failures. Successes build a robust belief in the faculty's sense of collective efficacy and failures undermine it.A resilient sense of collective teacher efficacy is built not only through sharing and celebrating success but also through the problem solving experiences and resilient and sustained effort needed to overcome failures.  At Mt Archer State School, High Performance Teaching Teams use their activity cycle to organise peer observations and feedback, team huddles and check-ins and team meetings to deep dive on problems of practice and share successes and challenges. One of the great toolkits in their meeting system is Quality Teaching Spotlights which allow teachers to collectively explore the schools priority areas and align classroom practice to research and as well as look at best practice examples from other schools

Vicarious Experience - Inquiry & Reflection

Vicarious experience - Inquiry & Reflection: Teachers do not rely on direct experience as the only source of information about their collective efficacy. They listen to stories about achievements of their colleagues as well as success stories of other schools. At Mt Archer State School, High Performance Teaching Teams use PD intensive items, such as Deep Dive Inquiry Discussions and The Council peer mentoring cycles to massively ramp up the benefits of vicarious experience from sharing within the team.

Social Persuasion - Feedback & Professional Development

Social Persuasion - Professional Feedback: Social persuasion is another means of strengthening a faculty's conviction that they have the capabilities to achieve their goals. Professional development activities and feedback about achievement can influence teachers. At Mt Archer State School, High Performance Teaching Teams use their meeting system and Hot Issues discussions and peer mentoring councils to solve problems and practice and reinforce their resilience and confidence to push beyond any setbacks and keep striving towards their goals as stated on the team data wall. They also update their data wall regularly celebrating the completion of milestones on their actions plans as they build ever higher levels of quality teaching and learning

Affective States - Emotional Regulation

Affective States - Emotional Regulation: Just as individuals react to stress, so do teams. Efficacious teams can tolerate pressure and crises and continue to function without severe negative consequences; in fact, they learn how to adapt and cope with disruptive forces. At Mt Archer State School, all members High Performance Teaching Teams  complete a weekly wellbeing pulse and examine a team level wellbeing scorecard and proactively set new wellbeing goals on a month by month basis. Enabling the team to track and improve their own wellbeing in real time gives greater autonomy and control to the team and enables school leaders to provide a ‘value add’ support role in the wellbeing journey rather than a compliance and policy implementation role. (You can see the wellbeing data trends in the case study links below)

HPTTs: Where’s the evidence they actually work? 

The great thing about building High Performance Teaching Teams is that there is plenty of real world evidence that this approach maximises Collective Teacher Efficacy as well as significantly improving student outcomes, staff wellbeing, and parent and community satisfaction with the school.

Collective Teacher Efficacy Outcomes: Mt Archer State School has been leading the way improving Collective Teacher Efficacy (CTE) by building High Performance Teaching Teams. Every teaching team uses the HPTschool's Team Pulse System to measure and manage their CTE in real time. The HPTschool's Team Pulse is Australia’s largest and longest running pulse survey supporting CTE in schools.

The HPTschool's Team Pulse System is based on a repeated measures methodology with weekly team efficacy data collected via each team member and the combined team profile collated and reported back to the team via a monthly scorecard for follow up action. CTE is measured based on the average of 4 simple output measures, one for each of the 4 domains of CTE (see diagram). Thus we can analyse the overall collective teacher efficacy within any teaching team as well as examine specific factors which are maximising or disrupting teaching team efficacy.

If we start by examining each of the four sub domains of collective teacher efficacy, we can see that teaching staff at Mt Archer State School have higher levels of Job Satisfaction, Performance Feedback, Peer Support and importantly, Work/Life & Wellbeing when compared to the normative sample of Australian Teachers.

Then if we compare Mt Archer State School's (2018) level of Collective Teacher Efficacy to the CTE Index for Australian Schools, there is a clear and significant difference, with Mt Archer's teaching teams achieving a much higher level of collective teacher efficacy compared to teaching teams in other schools.  As you can see in the next charts which examine CTE and annual improvement, improving collective teacher efficacy has a very positive impact on student achievement across the school!

Student, Staff, Parent & Community Outcomes: High Performance Teaching Teams, not only create higher collective teacher efficacy but also improve a much wider range of student, staff and parent outcomes. You can see a Primary School case study here (click) and a High School case study here (click). There is also a multitude of data sets across hundreds of HPT schools showing improvements across these domains which have not been written up as formal case studies yet. 

Is Your School On The Fast-Track To Build Collective Teacher Efficacy?

We know it is ‘teams’ of teachers working together effectively which creates the maximum impact on student learning.  We also know that the High Performance Teams environment creates the shared experiences necessary for building collective teacher efficacy – the single largest factor influencing student achievement.

When teams of teachers are working together in High Performance Teaching Teams they achieve extraordinary results with their students AND experience extraordinary levels of support and feedback. Is it time for your school to take the next steps in building High Performance Teaching Teams?

Dr Pete Stebbins PhD

Dr Pete Stebbins, PhD, is a workplace psychologist, executive coach & author of the recently released book: "The Five Disciplines of Extraordinary School Leaders". Pete has many years of research and professional practice behind him working extensively in education and health. Pete is the director of the High Performance Schools Program working with a large number of schools to maximise staff and student outcomes.