Middle School Students ’Collective Class Efficacy:Structure, Influencing Factors And Its Relations With School Adjustment Development Trend

The concept of collective efficacy has been proposed by Bandura to explainbehavior of groups and organizations at the group level in1980s. It was since thenintroduced to many areas, such as school education, team sports, athletic team,community building, military organizations and political activities of groups. Therelations between collective efficacy and group behavior have been fully confirmed inthese various areas. Then scholars pay much attention to the application of collectiveefficacy into school education, and created the concept ions of collective teacherefficacy and Collective class Efficacy. Researchers in the home and broad haveobtained many findings of collective teacher efficacy, but research of collective classefficacy is still in its infancy. As regards for the research content, the connotation andstructure of Collective class Efficacy remains controversial and lacks systematicstudies, and there is no research regarding the relationship between collective classefficacy and school adjustment. What’s more, previous researches are all in thecross-sectional design, and few researches consider the existence of nested hierarchy.In view of the deficiencies of previous researches, the present study talks about threemain questions by combining the method of cross-sectional design and trace design.Firstly, the meaning and structure of collective class efficacy is clarified, and a scaleon junior high school students’ collective class efficacy is established. Secondly,factors which influence junior high students’ collective class efficacy are exploredsystematically. Thirdly, the present study reveals the development of schooladjustment of middle school students and investigates the influence of Collective class Efficacy on school adjustment.Using the questionnaire survey and through stratified cluster random sampling,5083students from168classes in15schools are sampled in the cross-sectional study,and836students from30classes in2schools sampled in the longitudinal study. Thetracing study lasts two years, from the first semester of grade first to grade two,accounting for four investigations. The Hierarchical Linear Model, the MultilevelStructure Equation Model and Multilevel Latent Growth Curve model are applied intothe data analysis. Results are as follows:The junior high school students’ collective class efficacy refers to the sharingperceptions of students in a class that the ability of the class as a whole will achievethe goal,which is not only goal of learning, but also activity.Through the procedure ofdepth interviews, open-ended questionnaire, forecast and formal measurement,exploratory factor analysis and multilevel confirmatory factor analysis of datacollected reveals that middle school students’ collective class efficacy includescapacity evaluation and class goal achievement. All indicators of the two-levelmeasurement, such as the coefficient of internal consistency, test-retested reliability,convergent validity, construct reliability and predictive validity, have reachedpsychometric requirements, which suggests that the scale on junior high schoolstudents’ collective class efficacy is in good reliability and validity.Results of analysis of multilevel structure equitation model are these:1) in theindividual level, even the influence of gender, grade and family socio-economic statusis controlled, students self-efficacy can still positively predict collective class efficacy.2) In the class level, head teachers’ transformational leadership behavior andtransactional behavior has no immediate impact on collective class efficacy, but eachof them can influence collective class efficacy through the mediation effect of classinteraction process and performance of outstanding members in the class. Specifically,head teachers’ transformational behavior influence collective class efficacy throughthe mediation effect of class interaction process, while head teachers’ transactionalleadership behavior influence it through performance of outstanding members, andthen though class interaction process further.IV Hierarchical Linear Model indicates that collective class efficacy can positivelypredict school adjustment. Furthermore, multilevel analysis of mediation effectshowed that student self-efficacy has a full mediation effect in the relationshipbetween collective class efficacy and school adjustment.Comparing seven competition models, we found the differences of schooladjustment growth not only between individuals but also classes. The multilevel latentgrowth Curve model analysis shows that:1) In the individual level, middle schoolstudents’ school adjustment increases with age linearly, and the initial level of schooladjustment and pace of development are negatively related, that is to say, the higherthe initial level of school adjustment is, the more slowly it grows; there existsextremely significant gender difference on the level of school adjustment and the paceof development, although boys are lower than girls on the level of adjustment, theyare higher on the development speed; family socioeconomic status had no effect onmiddle school students’ initial level of adjustment or the speed of its development;student self-efficacy has effect on junior high school students’ initial level anddevelopment speed of school adjustment, the higher their self-efficacy is, the higherthe initial level of school adjustment is, whereas school adjustment of students withhigher self-efficacy develop more slowly than those with lower self-efficacy.2) At theclass level, the linear growth rate of middle school students’ school adjustment is notsignificant, but differences between classes are more obvious on the initial level ofschool adjustment. Collective classe fficacy can predict middle school students’school adjustment positively.