Collective Efficacy: “The Way We do Things Around Here”

In all organisations, including schools, functionality is considerably enhanced when there is a strong sense of collective efficacy, not just individual efficacy. Efficacy is the belief that one possesses what it takes to achieve their goals and that of the organisation.

• in all schools, there are a significant number of teachers who may have individual efficacy, but don’t have a confident belief that their colleagues have what it takes to do likewise
• collective efficacy occurs when staff believe in the capabilities of colleagues and hence the school to achieve both their individual and whole school goals; this is a very powerful influence in enabling student learning to soar.

When we encounter difficulties in:

• engaging our students
• creating and delivering high quality learning and teaching

The natural tendency for us is to say, “some of my students can’t learn”, rather than facing up to the situation and saying, “I haven’t got what it takes to engage, lead and implement effective learning and teaching for my students.”

Instead of being negative by default and adopting deficit thinking, let’s aspire to be positive by design together as an entire staff.

• the question posed by Goddard to ask ourselves is simple, “what can we all do together that we cannot do as individuals?”
• remember: the strength of the wolf is in the pack, and the strength of the pack is in the wolf.

Research (Marzano) tells us very clearly (and alarmingly) that we devote only 5% of our conversations at school to our core business of learning and teaching. Whereas we spend 95% of our time discussing operationally urgent busy things; not the non urgent important things.

Following are some suggestions that will build a strong sense of collective efficacy in our schools:

• begin every staff meeting with a one page practical 5 minute professional reading on learning and teaching practices and expectations that is given out when staff enter the meeting
• follow this with a 10 minute staff discussion about how all of us can implement them in our classes on a day to day basis should we feel they should be adopted school wide
• eliminate all administrivia from staff meetings; these can be communicated by staff bulletins, emails, staffroom whiteboards or staff blogs
• at each and every staff meeting, invite staff to share their best practice, followed by giving and receiving of developmental feedback via open questioning; authentically core business
• this activity on a regular basis, provides opportunities for deep reflection on our professional practice and to find sameness and intersections in what we do
• when staff return from external PD, make it incumbent on them to compile a reflection of what they learnt and then present it at a staff meeting so we can all incorporate it into our personal pedagogy; the reflection would also be emailed to all staff and put on a staff blog
• - encouraging and providing time release for WOW, Watching Others Work. We have plenty of great teachers in our schools, why not grow together from within, side by side and face to face; much cheaper than external PD and in nearly every case far more beneficial for both teachers and students.
• WOW involves releasing staff to observe, team teach, coach and mentor, especially in different faculties to share practices and expectations to build our collective efficacy.

The key in all of this is to be positive by design. When we cull some of the busy stuff and spend that time on establishing shared practices and expectations, many of the busy issues disappear through our consistency.

When we are courageous in our actions and transformational in our thinking, we will see amazing growth in the quality and consistency of learning and teaching through collective efficacy.

“Something that can be done at any time, will not be done.” Scottish Proverb