Collective Efficacy Blog Post

Please take a moment to check out this great blog post by Garth Larson on Collective Efficacy.  It is an interesting read with some great references and analogies. 

How Educators Can Understand the Power of Collective Efficacy From This Year’s Milwaukee Brewers
October 14, 2018 by Garth Larson, Ed.D

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
OCTOBER…one of the best times of the entire calendar year in the midwest. Although the current temperature is 32 degrees in Oshkosh, Wisconsin, there is so much to be excited about with October. Football is in full swing as high school teams are just beginning their playoff runs, college teams are in the middle of their brutal conference schedules, and professional football is nearing the halfway point of the season. Usually, that is enough to keep me excited about all that October brings. However, as a die-hard fan of all Wisconsin athletics, this October has even more to offer.

Our Milwaukee Brewers are playing the Los Angeles Dodgers in the National League Championship Series. Although I was excited the last time the Brewers were in the NLCS (2011), there was a feeling that team was going to lose to the St. Louis Cardinals.

They didn’t have the same swagger this year’s team demonstrates every time they walk on the field. But it’s not just the swagger and confidence that makes this year’s Milwaukee Brewers so interesting to watch, it’s their Collective Efficacy and different way of thinking about winning baseball games.


Professor John’s Hattie’s research in Visible Learning clearly points out that collective teacher efficacy has the highest impact on learning than any other approach to learning that has been studied. According to Hattie’s work, Collective Teacher Efficacy carries an impact of 1.57 (Visible Learning Plus, December 2017), which is almost four times the rate of what would be considered one year’s growth in learning. So if Collective Teacher Efficacy is so influential and we are aware of this statistic, why are schools still struggling to support high levels of learning for all students? The answer is pretty simple, they either don’t know what being efficacious looks like, or they have not established teams that believe they have the impact to do amazing things on behalf of kids and learning.


According to Jenni Donohoo’s blog post for The Learning Exchange on January 9, 2017, “Collective teacher efficacy (CTE) refers to a staff’s shared belief that through their collective action, they can positively influence student outcomes, including those who are disengaged and/or disadvantaged. Educators with high efficacy show greater effort and persistence, a willingness to try new teaching approaches, set more challenging goals, and attend more closely to the needs of students who require extra assistance.”
Dr. Donohoo goes on to include the following:
“Efficacy beliefs are very powerful because they guide educators’ actions. Goddard, Hoy, and Woolfolk Hoy (2004) noted that efficacy beliefs “directly affect the diligence and resolve with which groups choose to pursue their goals” (p. 8).

If educators’ realities are filtered through the belief that there is very little they can do to influence student achievement, then it is very likely these beliefs will be manifested in their practice. However, if a school staff shares a sense of collective efficacy, then they have a greater likelihood of positively impacting student learning, over and above any other influence.”

This is where the 2018 edition of the Milwaukee Brewers can be used to explain the notion of efficacy.The Brewers entered the final month of the season 4 games behind the Chicago Cubs and went 19-7 in September, including winning their last eight regular season games to win the division, and become the first place seed for the National League. That streak concluded at 12 games with their loss on Saturday night, but it still appears this team is poised to look ahead and what they can accomplish collectively as a team.

Why have they experienced this level of success? Because of the belief systems in themselves and each other to achieve success. Every interview I watch with this team revolves around the team and their strengths. Brewers manager Craig Counsell has taken an approach with his bullpen that is much different than most traditional teams. Their focus as a team defensively is to get 27 outs and score more runs than the other team. He doesn’t care how he gets those outs and scores the runs, as long as it happens. As a result of this leadership, his team has fully invested and bought into their collective efforts to achieve greatness. Having a starter intentionally only pitch 2 innings so they can go to the bullpen is unheard of. However, the Milwaukee Brewers have put on an absolute clinic using this approach by continually playing to the strengths of all players.


In 2003, Michael Lewis authored the book Moneyball:

The Art of Winning an Unfair Game. This book and later movie (2011) starring Brad Pitt, has helped educators think differently about supporting student learning. While I was working as the Director of Learning for the Winneconne Community School District (WI), we showed our staff the trailer to the movie Moneyball during our welcome back in-service that August.
Our goal was to help them understand the art of thinking different, using data/evidence to support decision making and to believe in the power of a team.

After watching the trailer and discussing the key ideas and concepts from the book and movie, we came up with three conclusions we could ALL support.

We have to think differently:We recognized the model of school we were using was not effective for all students. We were not ensuring ALL students were learning at high levels and we knew that needed to be the focus moving forward.
Our Goal Shouldn’t be to Raise Test Scores, Our Goal Should be to Focus on Increasing Learning!:Although the movie doesn’t necessarily indicate anything about test scores, there is a scene where Peter Brandt (Jonah Hill) says to Billy Beane (Brad Pitt), “your goal shouldn’t be the buy players, your goal should be to buy wins, and in order to buy wins, you need to buy runs.”  We made it very clear at that point in our conversations with our staff that we were not on a mission to raise test scores or increase accountability ratings. Our goal was to focus on increasing LEARNING. We knew if we focused on increasing learning and did it well for all students, test scores and accountability ratings would be the beneficiary of that approach.
The Answers are in the Room:We recognized we could not go out and recruit the state teacher of the year from every district because that wasn’t financially feasible. We also recognized that through our thoughts and beliefs, we could create grade level and content level teams of the year! We believed that we had all the talent we needed to help students experience higher levels of success. However, we had to believe  this collectively as a district. We had to believe in our impact and trust each other to do amazing things collectively on behalf of our students.
The end result was amazing, just as we are seeing with the Milwaukee Brewers. In four years, we significantly increased learning for ALL students and moved from accountability ratings showing “Meets Expectations” to now “Significantly Exceeding Expectations” and having the fourth highest rating of all K-12 school districts in the state of Wisconsin (422 school districts total). All of this was the result of amazing group of adults, supporting each other and believing in each other to support our students. That’s the power of collective efficacy!

In terms of this year’s Milwaukee Brewers, Collectively Efficacious is the best way to describe them. They are focused on winning as a group, not as a group of individuals. They trust each other in all scenarios, they have tried new approaches and they are focused on the strengths of each member within the organization. According to the work of John Hattie and Jenni Donohoo, that’s a formula for success. Although the Brewers may not win the NLCS or World Series if they get there, this year’s Milwaukee Brewers have provided additional evidence to support Hattie and Donohoo’s work on the undeniable power of collective efficacy!