The purpose of this study was to investigate the perceptions and beliefs of teachers at a Midwestern suburban middle school about students, student learning, and about teacher's beliefs of their collective abilities to achieve the task of school improvement. Saddleback Middle School (SMS) has experienced low standardized test scores since the implementation of NCLB. Of the school district's five middle schools, SMS consistently had the lowest scores in math and reading. The researcher sought to understand the relationship between teacher beliefs and student academic achievement. Eight volunteer teachers from SMS were interviewed twice and observed twice in their classroom settings. The findings of the interviews, observations, and information from teacher lesson plans and grading procedures were analyzed through the lens of Bandura's theory of collective teacher efficacy (CTE). With knowledge of the collective beliefs of the faculty, the leadership of the school could implement plans to improve faculty CTE and student achievement. Analysis of the data indicated a difference between what teachers thought of their teaching practices and how they actually performed in the classroom. They expressed knowledge of positive instructional practices to improve student learning but did not practice those strategies regularly in their classrooms. Participants tended to have a critical view of poor performing students and of the abilities of some of their colleagues. Findings indicate a need for future research regarding school culture and how it relates to CTE in school improvement and the limitations of case study research alone in investigating CTE beliefs of a faculty.School of Educational Studie
