Academic Optimism of High School Teachers: Its Relationship to Organizational Citizenship Behaviors and Student Achievement

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to build on an emergent research base for academic optimism by testing the construct and its relationship to student achievement and organizational citizenship behaviors in schools in a sample of public high schools. All participants in this study were full-time teachers guidance counselors, and other full-time professional instructional faculty from 36 public high schools in Virginia serving Grades 9–12. Although not random the sample comprised a demographic and geographic range of Virginia's 308 high schools featuring Grades 9–12. The data for this study were aggregated at the school level to support the school as the unit of analysis. The three dimensions of academic optimism were shown to correlate significantly with student achievement even when controlling for student family background. The findings in this study also confirm that academic optimism and organizational citizenship behaviors in schools are strongly correlated. Measuring teachers’ beliefs and perceptions about themselves, their colleagues, and their schools can provide important insights into the school's collective belief about instruction, learning, and student achievement and help principals improve the quality of schools’ learning contexts.