This week I attended our annual TAFE conference. The theme of 2023 was how Collective Efficacy (CE) has the biggest impact on our students. That is, that if we collectively believe we can, we will succeed as well as keep trying even in the face of challenge (Ganotice, Chan, Shen, Lam, Wong, Liu & Tipoe, 2022).

There is considerable research that supports the idea that collective efficacy of educators  is one of the leading influences on learner outcomes (Visible Learning, 2023). A study by Ganotice et al, (2022) outlined that groups with high CE outperformed low CE groups but that team cohesiveness predicates  CE levels. Social Cognitive Theory (SCT) could perhaps explain how this happens (Ganotice et al, 2022) because according to SCT, a person’s perspective, ideas and beliefs can predict and shape the outcomes, much like a self-fulfilling prophecy (Tauber, 1997).  This theory has been extrapolated to propose the same to a collective of people. But does CE just happen because we are told we can?

The study also pointed out that there are a number of ‘antecedents to collective efficacy which include leadership,  motivational climate, team cohesion, previous expectation, and past performance'(Ganotice et al, 2022). Therefore, our TAFE simply saying it doesn’t make it so. We need these additional organisational  ingredients to improve CE, assist in continual professional development and ultimately, improve learner outcomes.

And I am curious  if we could utilise CE when designing online  lessons for our students.