– The purpose of this paper is to examine the relationship between school principals’ sense of efficacy and their involvement with the Arkansas Leadership Academy's (the Academy) School Support Program (SSP).
– Data were collected from participating SSP principals to explore differences in mean principal self-efficacy given varied years of participation in SSP. The Principal Self-Efficacy Survey was used to measure the construct of principal self-efficacy of 27 principals participating in the Academy's SSP for low-performing schools.
– The findings suggest that principals of low-performing schools that participated in the Arkansas Leadership Academy's SSP for more years have a stronger sense of leadership efficacy than principals of low-performing schools that are just beginning the SSP. Post hoc qualitative data were collected through a focus group discussion to provide insight regarding actual practices that led to increased perceived self-efficacy as a result of participating in the SSP.
– This study is highly contextualized to the principals and school systems participating in the SSP, a limited population due to conditions under which schools qualify to participate in the program.
– As schools continue to be identified as needing to improve based on accountability measures, external sources of leadership development for the principals leading these schools should be considered as a possible means for increasing their senses of efficacy, and indirectly supporting the potential for improved school performance.
– The attributes of highly efficacious principals – self-regulating, confident, and calm in difficult situations – may be more critical to leaders engaged in systemic change in low-performing schools where the challenges may be more complex.
– There could be a strong argument that the influence of an outside support program might be one strategy to consider when addressing the improvement of low-performing schools through raising leader efficacy.
