Five Ways to Increase Collective Teacher Efficacy
Written by Sarah Dugan
If you’ve ever led or been part of a team with a negative culture, you’re familiar with the feelings of apathy, resignation, and futility accompanying fruitless team meetings and procedures.
On the other hand, if you’ve been on teams that get things done and, better yet, get things done that impact student learning and wellbeing, you know the resulting sense of connection, satisfaction, and gratification.
I knew this feeling as an 8th grade English teacher at Thoreau Middle School in Vienna, Va.. My curriculum team or PLC--professional learning community--collaborated to close achievement gaps and hit near 100% pass rates on state assessments.
How did we reach high levels of success?
Fun fact: Our journey to high performance wasn’t always pretty!
As a team, our “storming and norming” phases were intense. We each had strong opinions on what we should teach and how to teach it. Sometimes, we split hairs, like when we couldn’t agree on the precise definitions of internal and external characterization.
Although our teaching wasn’t identical, we used common assessments. In looking at assessment data across all our classes, we were forced into vulnerability as we examined whose students excelled or struggled on the skills we had taught.
Analyzing common assessment data was a powerful and sometimes uncomfortable way for us to grow. But every single disagreement we had probably made me a better practitioner.
A subtle but solid foundation of trust was forming as we muddled through our challenges during those years. Brick by brick, interaction by interaction, we developed trust in each other’s skills, commitment, and support. That growing trust allowed us to put down our shields of pride and learn from our mistakes and each other.
When I hear the term collective teacher efficacy, I think of the work I did with this team; how I grew as an educator; and how our students excelled.
In addition to the impact on students and all that green color-coding on our data reports, what has stayed with me is the deep connection I felt with those colleagues--the same people I fought with about characterization!
That’s the kind of feeling that keeps teachers returning to school year after year and what keeps them working hard for students. It’s magical.
Let’s talk about how to cultivate it.
Five Ways to Cultivate Collective Teacher Efficacy
One: Instructional Rounds
Inviting teachers to enter each other’s classrooms can revolutionize the learning environment. Watching peers in action leads to significant perspective shifts and ignites fresh ideas in a supportive, non-judgmental space. It’s all about mutual learning and growth, not evaluation or criticism. When educators frequently observe one another, exchange constructive feedback, and engage in discussions about teaching techniques, it changes the culture of the faculty. An accessible protocol for getting started with peer-to-peer visits is the Snapshot Observations process created by Ron Richhtart of Harvard’s Project Zero. Teach Learn Thrive also facilitates this process at schools; reply to this email to learn more.
Two: Teachers learn from teachers in PD
We know that professionals are most engaged when they have some autonomy in their work, so how can we give educators more autonomy over their professional learning, while also ensuring it’s high-quality and aligned to school goals? At Archbishop Curley High School in Baltimore, Md., leaders use teacher input to determine a PD focus for the year. Examples of focus areas include addressing learner variability in the classroom; leveraging AI for better instruction; or increasing joy and play in learning. Next, teachers complete a survey indicating their learning needs and interests within the chosen topic(s). From there, school leaders design a calendar of professional learning sessions on the requested topics. Some sessions are presented by faculty members with expertise in the identified areas, while others are facilitated by outside experts.
Additional ways to incorporate choice and voice include options for learning on one’s own or with a group, enrolling in an outside PD workshop, or participating in in-school PD.
Three: Grading calibration
In a school with grade-level or curriculum-based teams, conducting a grading calibration exercise will increase inter-rater reliability and deepen teachers’ understanding of the curriculum and assessment criteria. It also ensures fairness and consistency across classrooms in the school. Just as a rising tide lifts all boats, this practice sharpens every teacher’s skills. It also deepens the trust among team members because, through grading discussions, educators learn from each other.
Four: Create a teacher-designed instructional playbook
An instructional playbook helps educators identify and concentrate on high-impact teaching strategies. This focused approach ensures that teachers use proven methods to enhance student learning; teachers' common language and understanding about effective instructional practices; and facilitates better communication and collaboration among educators. Far from a finite set of options, the playbook is a starting point, a place where teachers can go for reliable, easy-to-implement strategies to use in their classroom. A physical artifact of the “work smarter, not harder” mentality, an instructional playbook saves teachers time and energy in planning. Supporting resources for this include Jim Knight’s Instructional Playbook and High-Impact Instruction.
Five: Book studies
Teams can choose books from a list of leadership-curated titles that align to the school’s mission and focus. This is one of the best ways to offer choice and autonomy in educator PD. Teachers can choose from a variety of relevant titles, form groups, and make a plan for reading and discussing the text. These meetings can be fertile ground for reflection, idea sharing, and teachers trying new things in their classrooms. Some of the most memorable book studies I participated in during my classroom years include Good to Great, 15 Fixes for Broken Grading, Learning by Doing, and Teaching with Poverty in Mind. Today, titles I’d suggest include Street Data, UDL Now, and Powerful Teaching: Unleash the Science of Learning.
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If you could strengthen the collective efficacy of your faculty and the teams they work in, what would happen with student learning? Would math scores skyrocket? Would students make reading gains that eclipse their pandemic gaps? And also, what would happen to your school’s teacher retention? Teachers want to be part of cohesive groups that learn together and make each other better. Collective efficacy leads to wins all around. What will you try in the spirit of collective efficacy?
Teach Learn Thrive builds collective efficacy in ways that meet each school where it is:
Need to challenge your faculty with new learning? Let’s talk about engaging professional development for the whole school.
Need to increase teacher collaboration? Maybe professional learning communities are your best route.
Need to get the faculty talking a consistent language around best-practice instruction? Let’s explore instructional rounds.
Get in touch and we’ll chat about what’s best for your school.
