Predicting the Self-Efficacy of School Leaders: Trust Matters

This presentation explored the relationship between trust and self-efficacy among school leaders at the 2015 AERA annual conference. Given the current legislative and political climate's focus on improving educator effectiveness, the researchers investigated self-efficacy beliefs among administrators, which had received limited research attention despite extensive work on teacher self-efficacy. The study examined 297 school leaders from twenty-five school districts participating in a pilot teacher evaluation program in a northeastern state, including superintendents, principals, assistant principals, supervisors of instruction, and other district-level positions. Using hierarchical multiple regression analysis, the researchers found that trust was a significant predictor of self-efficacy beliefs among school leaders, with both administrator-administrator trust and administrator-teacher trust serving as significant predictors even after controlling for demographic variables and district socioeconomic status. The findings revealed that trust between administrators had a stronger relationship with self-efficacy than trust between teachers and administrators. The researchers created new scales for measuring administrator self-efficacy and trust, which demonstrated high internal reliability. The study suggests that interventions targeting trust between administrators may promote increased levels of perceived self-efficacy within school systems, though the cross-sectional design prevented determination of causal direction. The researchers concluded that more research is needed to investigate whether administrator efficacy is associated with student achievement and to explore potential interventions.