| School principals have a small to moderate influence on student achievement; however, this influence is largely indirect via the behaviors, beliefs, knowledge, practices, and competencies of their teachers. Despite a growing number of studies examining the indirect influence of school principals on student achievement, there is still much to know concerning the practices school principals use to influence student achievement and how teachers mediate this influence. A promising contribution is the examination of the indirect relation between instructional leadership practices and student achievement via the efficacy beliefs of teachers. The reason for this optimism is the notion that teacher efficacy beliefs correlate with student achievement and instructional leadership practices correlate with teacher efficacy beliefs. However, only a handful of studies have examined the influence of instructional leadership practices on the efficacy beliefs of teachers. Although these studies found significant and positive relations (Stipek, 2012; Thoonen, Sleegers, Oort, Peetsma, & Geijsel, 2011; Geijsel, Sleegers, Stoel, & Kruger, 2009; Coladarci & Breton, 1997), the majority had serious limitations which likely led to an overestimation of the influence of instructional leadership practices.;The objective of this study was to surmount the limitations of the previous studies and ascertain whether school principals using specific instructional leadership practices positively influence the efficacy beliefs of lower secondary education teachers. This study was a secondary analysis of teacher, principal, and school data from twenty-one countries who participated in the 2007-2008 Teaching and Learning International Study (TALIS). It combined Pitner's (1988) mediated effects model and Bandura's (1997) social cognitive theory as a conceptual model, and employed a three-level random coefficient hierarchical linear model (HLM) to analyze the relations between teacher efficacy beliefs, teacher and school characteristics, three instructional leadership practices, cross-level interactions, and national characteristics.;This study found that (1) the efficacy beliefs of lower secondary education teachers significantly varied across schools and countries, and (2) several teacher characteristics, school characteristics, instructional leadership practices, and cross-level interactions had statistically significant relations with the efficacy beliefs of lower secondary education teachers across the twenty-one countries. The most important findings pertain to the relations between the instructional leadership practices and teacher efficacy beliefs as well as the cross-level interactions that included instructional leadership practices as moderators of the relation between teacher collaboration and teacher self-efficacy. The findings from this study add new insight to the study of instructional leadership, support Bandura's (1997) social cognitive theory, and corroborate findings from several studies within the literature.;Given the significant and positive relations between teacher collaboration and teacher self-efficacy, instructional leadership practices and teacher efficacy beliefs, and instructional leadership practices as a moderator of the relation between teacher collaboration and teacher self-efficacy, this study suggested that national, regional, or local policies should ensure that teacher preparation and professional development programs emphasize teacher collaboration, and administrator preparation and professional development programs focus on the promotion of teacher collaboration and the supervision of teachers. Finally, this study provided suggestions for further research, such as (1) addressing the limitations of the current study, (2) adding a qualitative component, (3) examining current covariates in greater depth as well as introducing new covariates, (4) enlarging the number and diversity of participating countries in future cross-national studies, and (5) improving the quality of indices representing psychological constructs in large-scale international studies (e.g., teacher self-efficacy). |
