The Effects of Teacher Empowerment on Teacher Commitment and Student Achievement

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to examine the perceived levels of teacher empowerment in schools showing an increase of student outcomes as well as a decrease of student outcomes on standardized proficiency tests in reading/language arts and mathematics over a three-year period. The relationship between the levels of teachers' perceived empowerment to student achievement was studied as well as specific dimensions of teacher empowerment connected to student outcomes. The instrumentation used in this study was the School Participant Empowerment Scale (SPES) that was developed by researchers Short and Rinehart (1992) and contained six theoretical dimensions of teacher empowerment: (a) autonomy; (b) shared decision making; (c) professional growth; (d) self-efficacy; (e) status; and (f) impact. Through a comparative design of research, the researcher identified, analyzed, and explained similarities and differences between teachers' perceived levels of empowerment at consistently achieving public schools and consistently declining public schools. Trends and developments derived from the SPES instrument were synthesized to determine key themes and, ultimately, determined the relationship between teacher empowerment and student achievement. In this study, there was no significant difference between teachers' perception of empowerment in consistently achieving schools and consistently declining schools. Further, it was found that the years of experience is a very strong determinant of teachers' perceived levels of empowerment. Findings also indicated that based on this study, the School Participant Empowerment Scale instrument, although it had sound validity and reliability, may be flawed, and the effectiveness of the study's results, therefore, is questionable. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2016 APA, all rights reserved)