Personal Empowerment, Efficacy, and Environmental Characteristics.

This study examines the personal empowerment and efficacy of teachers, relating these constructs to environmental characteristics in order to provide information for school counselors who are helping teachers in personal growth. The study also assesses the relationship to teacher conceptual level in order to determine its relationship to empowerment and efficacy. A group of 411 teachers completed a collection of scales and surveys in the spring of 1997. Multiple regressions were conducted for the Vincenz Empowerment Scale (Vincenz, 1990) with the School Culture Survey (Saphier, 1985), Teacher Efficacy Scale (Gibson and Dembo, 1984), Learner-Centered Battery (McCombs and Lauer, 1997), Standards-Based Implementation Survey (Seahorn, 1995), and Paragraph Completion Method (Hunt, Butler, Noy, and Rosser, 1978), as well as for satisfaction and age-related variables. Results indicate that empowerment is related at a low to moderate level to personal teaching efficacy, administrator professional treatment of teachers, reflective self-awareness, honoring of student voice, and satisfaction with teaching as a career. Strategies are presented for school counselors to use in helping teachers increase empowerment. (Contains 67 references.) (SM)