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Limited attention to messages transmitted between principals and teachers led to the general question for this study: is principal support of student psychological needs related to functional social conditions within the instructional core? Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to define principal support of student psychological needs and explain its leadership function through the lens of conversation theory. Without much empirical evidence to draw from, a theoretical argument for how principal support of student psychological needs might influence the features of the teaching and learning environment is advanced then tested empirically.

Hypotheses were tested using a non-experimental, correlational research design based on ex-post facto data collected from teachers and students in 93 schools in a metropolitan city of the USA. Data were collected in the spring of 2017 from randomly sampled teachers and students in the 93 schools. Usable responses were received from 1,168 teachers, yielding a response rate of 66 percent. A total of 4,523 students received surveys and usable responses were received from 3,301, yielding a response rate of 73 percent. Multi-level modeling was used to analyze the data.

Principal support of student psychological needs was related to school-level differences in faculty trust in students, collective teacher efficacy and student perceived autonomy support. Leadership practices surrounding professional development and instructional coherence had moderately strong, positive relationships with the outcome variables; however, the strength of these relationships diminished when principal support was included in the analysis.

The argument in this study proposes that principal–teacher conversations enhance leadership practices and support a vibrant and engaging instructional core when intentional messages build mental representations that enable teachers to understand sources of optimal student growth. Such use of conversation extends the functionality of principal–teacher interactions beyond that of teacher control and toward an ongoing sense-making and learning process.

Early conceptual thinking about distrust and more recent neurological evidence reveals that distrust is not the same as low trust. They are distinct mental states, active in different brain regions and shaped by different experiences. We use this evidence to conceptualize teacher distrust in the school principal and to construct a set of hypotheses for empirical testing.

A correlational research design with teacher survey data was used for the empirical study. Teacher survey data came from a sample of high school teachers in a metropolitan area of a southwestern state in the United States. A total of 801 high school teachers received an electronic survey by email. Useable responses were received from 416 teachers, leading to a 52% response rate. Hypotheses were tested with structural equation modeling in AMOS 28 using Robust Maximum Likelihood estimation.

The empirical evidence demonstrates that distrust and trust have different antecedents and that these perceptions have opposite relationships with teacher work stress and loyalty behaviors.

This study is a first step toward better understanding the distinction between distrust and trust in school role-relationships.

The purpose of this study is to test the validity of using collective trust as a social indicator of instructional capacity.

A hypothesized model was advanced for the empirical investigation. Collective trust was specified as a latent construct with observable indicators being principal trust in faculty (PTF), faculty trust in principal (FTP), faculty trust in colleagues (FTC), and faculty trust in students (FTS). It was hypothesized that enabling school structure is directly related to the latent collective trust construct and collective trust is directly related to school performance. Data were collected in the spring of 2010/11 from teachers and students in 85 schools in an urban school district in a southwestern state. A partially latent structural regression model was tested in AMOS 7.0.

Results of the measurement model support the theoretical relationship among faculty trust in principal, faculty trust in colleagues, faculty trust in students, and principal trust in faculty. Both directional hypotheses were supported: enabling school structure had a strong, direct effect on a culture collective trust and collective trust had a strong, direct effect on school performance.

The sample consisted of schools in one urban district in the southwestern part of the USA, and collective trust only operationalized the social dimension of instructional capacity.

Regular and consistent measures of collective trust have the potential to improve how administrators at site and district levels manage the implementation of improvement strategies designed to build capacity.

Many theoretical discussions treat trust as a constitutive property of capacity building, but few studies have empirically tested a priori models that specify relationships among structures and processes aligned with instructional capacity, collective trust, and school performance.

This study aims to draw on elements of diffusion theory to understand leadership reform. Many diffusion studies examine the spread of an innovation across social units but the objective is to examine diffusion of a collective leadership model within school units. Specifically, the strength of reform diffusion is tested to account for differences in instructional capacity and to explain the spread of leadership reform within Title I elementary schools.

A mixed method design was used to understand how social factors facilitated the diffusion of leadership reform, and to test for a diffusion effect. Qualitative data were derived from interviews, field notes, observations, and documents using a grounded theory approach. Open and axial coding techniques were used to develop coherent categories of major and minor themes. Quantitative data were hierarchical, with teachers and students nested in schools. A random‐intercepts, means‐as‐outcomes model was used to test for a diffusion effect on instructional capacity.

Strong principal leadership, a commitment to collective responsibility and shared influence, frequent and open communication, and time to build capacity were conditions that supported diffusion of the leadership model. Diffusion of the leadership model mattered for instructional capacity. Each indicator of instructional capacity was more prevalent in schools that had diffused the leadership model to the mentoring and sustaining stages.

The study is limited to one type of reform and 36 Title I elementary schools from an urban and urban fringe district in a Southwestern state. Further, the study does not delve deeply into facilitative factors within various stages of the diffusion processes. It focuses on social factors that enable schools to bring the leadership reform to scale.

Framing reform as an intervention to be implemented in schools, rather than a social process that institutionalizes planned change, trivializes the actual complexity of transforming practice. Regular interactions among school members around the school's vision, coupled with leadership and time, contributed to reform diffusion and improved instructional capacity in this study. Reform diffusion, a process that takes time, strong leadership, and regular social interactions, needs to be given more consideration as a valuable process to improve school performance.

The findings suggest that facilitative factors of diffusion can advance reform and improve capacity simultaneously. Successful reforms, defined as ones that disrupt traditional cultures and achieve goals, evolve through developmental stages that eventually lead to a changed culture. The rate of this evolution may vary, but the temporal process of establishing a shared understanding; designing, experimenting, and developing new tools; fostering expertise; and forming strong social networks are foundational supports for authentic and sustainable reform.

Reform diffusion offers an alternative framework to better understand the institutionalization of planned change in schools. The findings, while limited to elementary schools engaged in leadership reform, provide support for studying reform as an holistic social process that encompasses the design, adoption, implementation, and institutionalization of planned change.

To investigate the consequences of relational trust, especially parent measured trust, for desirable school outcomes.

Using a US Midwestern state sample of 79 schools, parent and teacher trust data are used to derive a trust‐effectiveness typology. Trust was conceptualized as one party's willingness to be vulnerable to another party based on the confidence that the latter party is benevolent, reliable, competent, honest, and open.

Findings derived from the extraction of canonical correlation variates support the prediction that a complex and extensive trust environment is predictive of internal school conditions and consequences, even after accounting for socioeconomic status of the school community. Four theoretical trust‐effectiveness patterns emerge from the interpretation.

The research design was planned as a school level study. Perceptual data collected at the individual level were intended for aggregation thus, nested analyses were not possible. Other evidence is offered for justification of aggregations.

Researchers and school leaders need to consider a broad trust environment as having relevance for predicting and enacting school success, not just those trust levels that can be measured as teacher perceptions.

Previous school trust research, when it has considered parent trust, measured it as a teacher perception. This study measures parent trust directly and hence more credibly. The empirically derived trust‐effectiveness school types introduce the possibility that “high teacher trust” can sometimes be part of a menacing school pattern.

Recent scholarship has augmented Bandura's theory underlying efficacy formation by pointing to more proximate sources of efficacy information involved in forming collective teacher efficacy. These proximate sources of efficacy information theoretically shape a teacher's perception of the teaching context, operationalizing the difficulty of the teaching task that faces the school and the faculty's collective competence to be successful under specific conditions. The purpose of this study was to examine the influence of three contextual variables: socioeconomic status, school level, and school structure on teacher perceptions of collective efficacy.

School level data were collected from a cross‐section of 79 schools in a Midwestern state. Data were analyzed at the school level using hierarchical multiple regression to determine the incremental variance in collective teacher efficacy beliefs attributed to contextual variables after accounting for the effect of prior academic performance.

Results support the premise that contextual variables do add power to explanations of collective teacher efficacy over and above the effects of prior academic performance. Further, of the three contextual variables school structure independently accounted for the most variability in perceptions of collective teacher efficacy.

A sample of 79 schools was considered small to accurately test a hypothesized model of collective teacher efficacy formation using structural equation modeling. That approach would have had the advantage of permitting the researchers to identify the relationships among the predictor variables and between the predictors and the criterion. Additionally, there was a concern of possible aggregation bias associated with aggregating collective teacher efficacy scores to the school level. Despite these limitations, the findings hold theoretical and practical implications in that they defend the theoretical importance of contextual factors as efficacy sources. Furthermore, formalized and centralized conditions conducive to promoting perceptions of collective efficacy in teachers are identified.

Extant collective efficacy studies have generally not operationalized Bandura's efficacy sources to include the effects of current context. This study does.

This study was designed to test the relationship between principal support of student psychological needs and faculty trust in students. Without direct empirical evidence to draw from, the line of reasoning integrated evidence on social-cognitive processes involved in trust formation and conversation theory to advance two hypotheses: (1) After accounting for school and leadership conditions, principal support of student psychological needs will be related to school differences in faculty trust in students; (2) The relationship between principal support of student psychological needs and faculty trust in students is mediated by a positive view of the teaching task.

Hypotheses were tested with a nonexperimental, correlational research design using ex post facto data. Due to the hierarchical structure of the data, hypotheses were tested with a 2-2-1 multilevel mediation model in HLM 7.03 with restricted maximum likelihood estimation.

Findings were consistent with the hypothesized relationships – principal support of student psychological needs was related to faculty trust in students and this relationship was mediated by teacher perceptions of the teaching task.

School research has primarily examined interpersonal antecedents of trust, focusing on behaviors and characteristics that position a person or group as trustworthy. This study extends trust research to the cognitive side of the formation process, calling attention to the function of mental representation in shaping trust discernments. Results suggest that cognitive processes hold promise as both a source of faculty trust in students and as a malleable mental structure that school leaders can shape through conversation.

Self-determination theory was used to conceptualize a type of school climate that has consequences for the social, emotional and cognitive well-being of students. The purpose of this paper is to argue that a need-supportive climate emerges through a general pattern of interactions that students experience as supporting their psychological needs.

A hypothesized model was tested whereby the latent need-supportive climate variable was predicted to work through identification with school to influence student grit. Ex post facto data were collected during the 2015–2016 school year from a random sample of students in either the 5th, 8th, or 11th grades in 71 schools located in a southwestern city in the USA. A total of 3,233 students received surveys. Of these students, the authors received useable responses from 2,587 students for a response rate of 80 percent.

Findings support the hypothesis that autonomy-support, competence-support and relational-support are integrated and combine to shape experiences that align with student psychological needs. Additionally, students who experienced a need-supportive climate were also more likely to identify with school and expressed higher grit toward academic pursuits.

A need-supportive climate adds meaning to more general characterizations of school life (e.g. healthy, supportive, open, etc.) and it affords a theoretically derived explanation for how the social side of schools nurtures the inner determination of students to excel.