Measuring and Linking School Professional Learning Environment Characteristics, Teacher Self and Organizational Efficacy, Receptivity to Change, and Multiple Indices of School Effectiveness.

During the past two decades, several important lines of inquiry have been developed to study the complex organizational and learning environment features of schools. In addition, researchers, theorists and educational policy makers have become increasingly concerned about educational reform and change, and with establishing linkages between educational improvement efforts and the effectiveness of schools. The extant school effectiveness and effects literatures have primarily focused on student achievement as the school outcome/productivity variable of concern. Alternatively, the literature on the study of schools as organizations has primarily focused on the measurement of school organizational, cultural and environmental variables and linkages of these to the efficiency, adaptability and general productivity of schools as organizational units. This study addresses the need to develop more comprehensive, integrated conceptual frameworks for studying schools that utilize multiple indices of school effectiveness, and that link these indices to school organizational, environmental and personal variables. Teachers (n=1041) drawn from fifty three schools in a large, urban/suburban school district in a southeastern state participated in the study. Survey data were collected using original measures of teacher self and organizational efficacies and characteristics of the professional learning environment of schools, and a revised measure of teacher receptivity to change. These variables were subsequently linked to multiple indices of school productivity, holding power and organizational effectiveness. The study variables were organized, and exploratory data analyses were completed in

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