Iksang Yoon
Published: 2021
Total Pages: 0
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The overall purpose of this dissertation was to examine how school climate, leadership, and teachers’ belief systems are interrelated and how they jointly influence teachers’ classroom practices and students’ learning and development. This dissertation is structured as follows. In chapter 1, the overarching themes of the dissertation are introduced. In chapter 2, 3, and 4, three empirical studies are presented to examine the school organizational processes from various perspectives. In chapter 5, the dissertation concludes with an overall discussion of the main findings and their implications. In chapter 2 (manuscript #1), I examined the mechanism between teachers’ professional development experience and the quality of instruction teachers deliver. I conducted confirmatory factor analysis and structural equation modeling with the Teaching and Learning International Survey 2018 U.S. subsample (N = 2,127). I found that teachers’ perceived quality of their professional development experience was positively related to their use of effective instructional practices (i.e., clarity of instruction, cognitive activation, classroom management). Notably, collaboration among teachers and self-efficacy beliefs mediated this relationship. In chapter 3 (manuscript #2), I explored interrelationships among principals’ instructional leadership, collective efficacy beliefs of teachers, and classroom goal structures (i.e., mastery goal structure, performance goal structure). By using teacher survey reports (N = 1,001), I conducted confirmatory factor analysis and structural equation modeling to investigate these relationships. The findings showed that instructional leadership directly predicted mastery goal structure, but not performance goal structure. Furthermore, group competence facet of collective efficacy beliefs mediated the relation between instructional leadership and mastery goal structure. In chapter 4 (manuscript #3), I identified social and emotional competency profiles among elementary school students by adopting a person-centered approach. I used survey reports from 2,926 students (3-6 grades) and 142 teachers in 14 schools. The results demonstrated five distinct profiles based on six domains of social and emotional competency (i.e., compassion, emotion regulation, grit, growth mindset, hope, sense of belonging). These profile memberships were significantly associated with students’ socio-demographic characteristics as well as their teachers’ level of comfort with emphasizing social and emotional learning. Overall, these separate but related manuscripts complement each other to provide nuanced understandings of organizational processes by adopting different theoretical perspectives and methodological approaches. In investigating school organizational processes, the three manuscripts incorporate both teacher and student outcomes such as specific instructional practices, classroom climate, and students’ social and emotional development. The findings of these manuscripts contribute to the current line of research on school leadership, school climate, professional learning of teachers, and social and emotional learning. Moreover, by interweaving school, teacher, and student level aspects, meaningful implications can be drawn for educators and policymakers.