Leading with Common Preeminence
Dr. AshLee Lamb
Educator, Researcher, Leader
So, what's the problem?
Teacher accountability and workload have continually increased due to national and state accountability measures. This intense increase has caused additional and extreme levels of performance pressure for teachers. With these pressures continuing to increase, teachers are likely to feel burnout (Hill & Barth, 2004). When the amount of teacher workload and teacher accountability expectations compound together, teachers feel an incredible amount of stress (Akpochafo, 2012). The stress and workload that teachers feel greatly impacts student achievement and teacher attrition rates (Education Week, 2017).
​
Principals are in unique positions. They serve as the link between district, state, and national reform mandates, teacher workload, and teacher self-efficacy. The daily actions and decisions principals make can either add to or take away from their teachers’ self-efficacy levels. This is due to the very nature of their position; they serve as mediators of change related stress in the workplace (Brown & Nagel, 2004; Calabrese, 1987; Lumsden, 1998; Phanos, 1990).
Let's talk research...
Previously, human behavior had been described as unidirectional causation which means that the behavior of humans is controlled and shaped by either internal dispositions or environmental influences (Bandura, 1989). When Albert Bandura introduced his Social Cognitive Theory he changed what the world thought about human behavior by introducing “triadic reciprocal determinism” (Bandura, 1989). This means that many factors, such as individual behavior and cognition, environmental influences, and other personal factors all operate together, each influencing the others in a bidirectional relationship (Bandura, 1989).
​
There are three components to Bandura’s Model of Triadic Reciprocal Determinism. The three components are comprised of behavioral, environmental, and intrapersonal. Together, these three components influence agency (Bandura, 2012). Many different factors can comprise each of the three components of the Triadic Reciprocal Determinism. In this study, the behavior component represents the amount of effective classroom behavior that is displayed by the teacher. Environmental factors are the advantages and barriers directly related to the transformational leadership descriptors displayed from the principal. Intrapersonal factors are comprised of the teacher’s self-efficacy levels.
Lamb, 2020
They did what?!?!?
So researcher's wanted to delve a little deeper into human behaviors at schools....
​
In 1963, Rosenthal and Jacobson conducted an experiment in which teachers were told that some of their students would demonstrate major academic gains throughout their current school year based on results of an Inflected Acquisition test from Harvard. Unbeknownst to the teachers, this test did not exist. After eight months, those students who were randomly selected by the researchers had made significantly higher gains that the rest of the students in the class. The beliefs of the teacher are what made the differences for these students (Rosenthal & Jacobson, 1968, as cited by Donohoo, (2017).
​
This experiment “provide(s) further evidence that one person’s expectations of another’s behavior may come to serve as a self-fulfilling prophecy” (Rosenthal, 1968, p. 20), and “when we expect certain behaviors of others, we are likely to act in ways that make the expected behavior more likely to occur” (Rosenthal & Babad, 1985).
Thus, the Rosenthal Effect, or The Pygmalion Effect was created. The synopsis of The Pygmalion Effect is that teachers’ expectations & self-efficacy influences their own teaching, which in turn, impacts the students’ beliefs on their abilities. An increase in the students’ beliefs on their own abilities then causes positive actions in school and increases their academic achievements. These increased achievements reinforce the teacher’s expectancy levels and self-efficacy. (McLeod, 1995).
Take a second to think about your beliefs.
Do you really believe every single one of your students can make progress?
Can you find ways to intentionally tell your students you believe in them, and mean it?
Lamb, 2020
So what teacher's believe about their students matters...
There is plenty of research to support the idea that teachers are the #1 influence on student achievement. So, what are leaders going to do about it? That is where we must focus our thoughts.
Mina Shaughnessy (1977) says, “However, unsound such judgements may be at the onset, they do tend gradually to fulfill themselves, causing students to lag behind their peers a little more each year until the gap that separates the groups becomes vast and permanent” (pp. 275).
Take a minute to think about your bias' honestly. Do you think less of a particular type of student? Do you assume your poorest kids 'just can't do it'? Do you ever say, "They just aren't able to do that?"
Perhaps, it's time to change your mindset about your students. When we believe every single kid can do it, we see it happen. Over & over again!
In 1982, Rosenthal, Babad, and Inabr conducted an experiment in which they investigated teachers with low-biases and high-biases towards students and the relationship between those biases and their student’s achievement. The research concluded that teachers show more favorable actions towards the students they believe have more favorable course expectations and treat students whom they believe have less favorable actions less favorably (Rosenthal, 1985). Not all teachers are susceptible to this type of bias. By examining teacher bias levels, it is evident which teachers are more likely to treat all students favorably, or not (Rosenthal, 1985).