The Importance of Collective Efficacy in Education

As a teacher, if you’re looking for more ways to positively affect the lives of your students, consider the practice of collective efficacy. Also known as collective teacher efficacy (CTE), this science-backed behavior has powerful implications, especially in K-12 classrooms. Read more to learn about CTE and how it is best implemented with involvement from the entire school community.

What Is Collective Efficacy?

“A group’s shared belief in the conjoint capabilities to organize and execute the courses of action required to produce given levels of attainment.” — Psychologist Albert Bandura on collective efficacy

Albert Bandura is credited with introducing the concept of CTE, defining it in the 1970s. In a landmark 1993 study, he explained that teachers who work together to develop a strong sense of collective efficacy in their school community can make significant contributions to the academic success of children.

Putting his theory into practice, he was able to show that the positive effects of CTE on student academic performance outweigh the negative effects of low socioeconomic status. That set the stage for other researchers to build on Bandura’s findings; among them Roger Goddard, Wayne Hoy, and Anita Wollfolk Hoy. Together, the trio demonstrated how collective teacher efficacy is positively associated with differences between schools in student-level achievement in both reading and mathematics.

Professor John Hattie, also renowned for research in collective efficacy, further defined the concept of CTE in his 2008 book “Visible Learning.” In an interview, he described collective efficacy as, “teachers working together to have appropriately high, challenging expectations of what a year’s growth for a year’s input looks like.”

He explained, “It’s not just growth mindset. It’s not just ‘rah-rah’ thinking. It’s not just ‘Oh, we can make a difference!’ But it is that combined belief that it is ‘us’ that causes learning.”

The Importance of Collective Teacher Efficacy

“When you fundamentally believe you can make the difference, and then you feed it with the evidence you are — then that is dramatically powerful.” — John Hattie, educator

Teachers are motivated by their students’ success. Research consistently demonstrates that when educators work together with a shared belief in their collective capacity to improve learning, the results extend far beyond what any individual teacher can accomplish alone. A 2002 study by Hoy, Sweetland, and Smith found that collective efficacy encouraged individual teachers to make more effective use of the skills they already possess and share that knowledge with colleagues. As a result, students are empowered to succeed and reach for higher goals in the process. They also learn more, causing their own investment in academic achievement to soar.

What makes collective teacher efficacy particularly significant is its potential to level the playing field for all students. Research by Goddard, Hoy, and Woolfolk Hoy revealed that collective teacher efficacy is a stronger predictor of student achievement than socioeconomic status, a finding that has profound implications for closing opportunity gaps in schools.

This means that, in schools where teachers develop strong collective efficacy, students’ family income, parental education level, and home circumstances become less determinative of their academic success. The collective belief and coordinated action of the teaching staff can effectively counteract advantages or disadvantages students bring from outside the school walls.

In practical terms, collective teacher efficacy functions as an equity strategy because it:

• Disrupts deficit thinking: When teachers believe collectively in their power to reach all students, they shift from asking “Can these students learn?” to “How will we ensure these students learn?”
• Distributes expertise: Rather than some students getting “the best teachers” while others do not, collaborative structures ensure effective practices spread throughout the school.
• Creates consistent high expectations: A shared sense of efficacy means all students, regardless of their starting point, encounter adults who believe in their potential and coordinate efforts to support their growth.
• Generates adaptability: Teacher teams with strong collective efficacy don’t accept failure; instead, they persistently modify their approaches until all students succeed.

Professor John Hattie’s comprehensive research on factors influencing student achievement places collective teacher efficacy at the very top, with an effect size of 1.57, meaning it has nearly four times the average effect on student learning.

This evidence points to a powerful truth: While we cannot control the circumstances students face outside of school, we can create school environments where educators’ collective capacity to teach effectively matters more than any demographic factor. When teachers believe together that they can make a difference and organize their work accordingly, they create the conditions for every student to thrive.

How to Measure Collective Teacher Efficacy

“Perhaps the educational system needs to re-envision teaching effectiveness, with a focus on encouraging and sustaining beliefs that educators and schools can make a difference, rather than simply asking for high test scores.” — Dr. Rachel Jean Eells, 2011 dissertation

Studies of CTE often address the relationship between teacher efficacy and student achievement on a larger scale, taking a step back to consider the big picture. According to Bandura, there are two main considerations when evaluating success:

• Individuals’ beliefs about their own efficacies to accomplish group goals
• Members’ beliefs about the group’s ability to accomplish goals

Dr. Rachel Jean Eells uses sports as an example in her 2011 Loyola University Chicago dissertation, titled “Meta-Analysis of the Relationship Between Collective Teacher Efficacy and Student Achievement.” She explains, “If the collective activity consists of the sum of independent successes, as it does for a track and field team, then it is preferable to measure and aggregate the personal efficacies of the actors.”

She wrote, “When an entire group must interact, like a basketball team would, and collective activity is the product of cooperative work, then it makes more sense to measure group members’ beliefs about what the team can accomplish.” In a school setting, this understanding is believed to improve teacher retention and recruitment, as well as ensuring that members of the school community collectively feel prepared for the future.

Beyond theoretical frameworks, schools can use practical tools to make teacher learning and collective efficacy visible. One effective approach is creating a shared documentation system where educators periodically record their learning goals, instructional changes they’re implementing, data sources they’re monitoring, and evidence of student progress. This simple structure enables teams to see patterns across classrooms, celebrate growth over time, and identify where collective support is most needed. When teams regularly review such documentation together, they build awareness of their collective impact and can more clearly connect their coordinated efforts to improvements in student learning.

How Teachers can Achieve Collective Efficacy

CTE is only possible when teachers feel in sync with each other, leadership, and students. Implementing an agreed upon action plan with data points to measure success is crucial. Bandura explains that positive outcomes shine a light on the impact of collective behaviors, feelings, and motivations. For that reason, CTE is a resource that does not deplete with use, but is instead renewed over time with each success.

Research by Hattie, Eells and Jenni Donohoo point to assignments, tests, and portfolios of work as good measures of students’ daily progress, but some of the most valuable feedback is gained from conversations with children about what is being implemented and how the processes make them feel.

An open dialogue between educators and school leaders is also important to foster. In their work, Hattie, Eells and Donohoo say that doing so allows teachers to increasingly orient their work around outcomes.

Instead of worrying about test schedules and tweaking curriculum, the researchers suggest more useful questions, such as:

• Did the students gain understanding?
• How do we know?
• How can we use evidence of learning to improve classroom instruction?

Creating Psychological Safety

Before collective teacher efficacy can flourish, schools must establish a culture where educators feel safe taking risks, sharing challenges, and offering honest feedback to one another. Psychological safety is the shared belief that the team is a safe space for interpersonal risk-taking, and it is the bedrock upon which authentic collaboration is built.

In practice, this means teachers must feel comfortable saying “I tried this strategy and it didn’t work” or “I’m struggling to reach this group of students” without fear of judgment or evaluation. When teams create conditions where vulnerability is welcomed rather than penalized, teachers shift from isolated problem-solving to collective learning. This requires intentional cultivation: Leaders and teacher teams alike must establish norms that frame struggles as learning opportunities, not deficits.

One practical approach is to adopt what some schools call a “public learning stance”: a regular practice where teachers share moments of uncertainty from their classrooms and invite colleagues to help problem-solve together. This might involve showing student work that reveals confusion, discussing an instructional moment that didn’t go as planned, or posing genuine questions about how to better support learners. When this becomes routine rather than exceptional, teams build the trust necessary for true collective efficacy to emerge. Importantly, the purpose of sharing challenges must always be framed as supporting teacher learning and growth, never as evaluating teacher competence.

The Collective Efficacy Roadmap for Implementation

Understanding collective teacher efficacy is one thing; building it systematically is another. Successful schools implement a structured process that allows teacher teams to work together on shared instructional challenges, practice new strategies, and see tangible evidence of their collective impact. This cycle typically unfolds over six to eight weeks and provides a clear roadmap for teams to follow.

• Step 1: Identify a Shared Challenge. Teams begin by examining student learning data together (recent assessments, classroom observations, student work samples, etc.) to identify one priority learning need that affects multiple classrooms. The key is selecting a common focus that every teacher commits to addressing. This shared challenge gives the team concrete direction and ensures everyone has something meaningful to discuss at each collaborative meeting.
• Step 2: Build Knowledge and Skills Together. Rather than isolated professional development, teams collectively deepen their understanding of evidence-based strategies that address their identified challenge. This might involve reading research articles, watching instructional videos, discussing case studies, or analyzing student work together during team meeting time. By learning together about a specific instructional approach, teachers develop a shared language and common understanding that strengthens their collaborative work.
• Step 3: Practice in Safe Spaces. Teachers then implement the selected strategy multiple times in their own classrooms without observation or evaluation. This “safe practice” phase, which typically lasts two weeks, gives educators the opportunity to experiment, adjust, and build confidence with the new approach. The absence of external observation during this phase is intentional: Teachers need space to learn and refine without performance pressure.
• Step 4: Open Up Practice to Colleagues. Once teachers feel comfortable with the strategy, they open their classroom doors to peer observation. Importantly, the observed teacher controls the process, choosing when the observation occurs and what specific feedback they want. Each team member both observes a colleague and is observed by a colleague, creating reciprocal learning. This structured peer observation builds trust and allows teachers to see the strategy in action across different classroom contexts.
• Step 5: Monitor, Measure, and Reflect. Throughout the cycle, teachers track student progress and remove barriers to learning as they emerge. As the cycle concludes, teams reflect together on what they learned, both about student growth and about their own development as educators. Critically, this reflection includes celebrating successes at every level: individual teacher wins, student breakthroughs, and collective team growth. These acknowledgments reinforce the connection between teachers’ collaborative efforts and improved student outcomes, renewing the team’s sense of collective efficacy for the next cycle.

This cycle creates the conditions for collective efficacy to emerge naturally, as teachers repeatedly experience the power of coordinated action and shared learning.

Tips for Educators to Foster Collective Efficacy

IIf you’re interested in learning how to foster collective teacher efficacy at your school, here are some realistic starting points:

Teacher-designed and teacher-led professional development is particularly powerful. When teams have choice in their learning focus areas and can decide whether to engage in book studies, online courses, or collaborative inquiry projects while still working toward shared school goals, they take greater ownership of their growth and are more invested in implementation.

• Start with a quick win to motivate teachers to believe in the process and each other. Don’t burden already busy teachers by introducing a multi-step approach that can be drawn out.
  • For instance, a team might commit to trying one simple instructional strategy across all their classrooms for just two weeks, then gathering to share what they noticed. When teachers quickly see positive results from a coordinated effort, they build momentum and trust for tackling more complex challenges together.
• Build trust as a team to inspire respect and willingness to share ideas.
  • One effective approach is establishing team norms at the outset that explicitly value learning over judgment. For example, teams might agree that sharing what didn’t work is just as valuable as sharing successes, or that all feedback will be framed as “I wonder if…” rather than “you should…” These agreements create the psychological safety necessary for authentic collaboration.
• Set goals together, and when milestones are achieved, take time to celebrate successes together, too.
  • Consider scheduling brief “celebration pauses” at pivotal points in the year — perhaps in December and May — where teachers share stories of their professional growth and student progress. These intentional moments help teams recognize how far they’ve come and renew their collective commitment to continued improvement.
• Share knowledge with job swaps and data exchange to help get everyone on the same page.
  • Peer observation protocols, such as instructional rounds where teachers visit each other’s classrooms with a specific focus, allow educators to see effective practices in action. Similarly, collaborative grading of student work (where teachers assess work samples from different classrooms without knowing which students produced them) helps calibrate expectations and spark meaningful discussions about instruction.
• Communicate with each other regularly about what is observed and discussed in individual classrooms.
  • Start faculty or team meetings with five-minute “best practice shares” where teachers showcase a successful strategy, share a student breakthrough, or pose a genuine instructional question to the group. These brief exchanges normalize ongoing professional growth and help educators learn from each other’s daily classroom experiences.
• Study and practice techniques of collective efficacy with online, self-paced courses.
  • Teacher-designed and teacher-led professional development is particularly powerful. When teams have choice in their learning focus areas and can decide whether to engage in book studies, online courses, or collaborative inquiry projects while still working toward shared school goals, they take greater ownership of their growth and are more invested in implementation.

How School Leaders Can Support Collective Efficacy

While collective teacher efficacy emerges from the collaborative work of teaching teams, school leaders (including principals, instructional coaches, and administrators) play a vital role in creating the conditions that allow it to flourish. Research consistently shows that leaders influence collective efficacy not by mandating collaboration, but by removing barriers, providing resources, and modeling a learning stance themselves.

Effective leaders:

• Protect collaborative time as sacred, ensuring teachers have regular, uninterrupted opportunities to engage in meaningful professional learning together
• Provide access to student learning data, instructional materials, and professional development opportunities that align with teams’ identified needs
• Cultivate a school culture where risk-taking is encouraged, mistakes are viewed as learning opportunities, and teacher voices genuinely shape instructional decisions
• Demonstrate their own willingness to be vulnerable learners by admitting uncertainty, seeking feedback, and visibly adjusting their practice
• Use school communications or staff meetings to consistently share evidence of student progress and explicitly connect team efforts to improved outcomes

If you’re interested in learning more ways to be an effective instructor or school leader, consider programs like the University of San Diego’s Division of Professional and Continuing Education (PCE) Teacher Leadership Certificate Program. Created for K–12 teachers, it can help you develop the skills, tools, and strategies to better contribute to student and school success.

For more about the importance of online learning opportunities, check out the eBook, “5 Reasons Why Continuing Education Matters for Educators.”

Frequently Asked Questions