Abstract

• The general objective of this study is to study the relationship between school principals‟ transformational leadership practices and collective teacher efficacy in Basic Education Primary Schools in Pathein Township. In this study, sample size of 161 respondents from (21) Basic Education Primary Schools were selected by using cluster sampling. The questionnaires and open-ended questions were developed based on the literature review, Leithwood and Sun‟s (2012) dimensions of principals‟ transformational leadership practices and Barr‟s (2002) dimensions of collective teacher efficacy. Five-point Likert-scales were employed. The internal consistencies (Cronbach‟s alpha) were (0.97) for the instruments of transformational leadership practices and (0.95) for the instruments of collective teacher efficacy. Descriptive statistics, One-way ANOVA, Independent Sample t-Test and Pearson-correlation were used to analyze the quantitative data. The level of principals‟ transformational leadership practices in this study was moderately high. There were no significant differences in these practices grouped in terms of principals‟ personal factors. However, there were significant differences in three dimensions except setting direction and overall transformational leadership practices according to their academic qualification. Overall collective teacher efficacy was high level. Among the dimensions of teacher collective efficacy, student discipline was also high but instructional strategies was moderately high. In qualitative findings, teachers did not believe in instructional strategies (N=10, 6.21%) because of lower staffing level, weakness in lesson plan and new curriculum reform. There were no significant differences grouped in terms of teachers‟ personal factors. The results of Pearson-correlation indicated that there were significant and positive relationships between principals‟ transformational leadership practices and collective teacher efficacy. The results of qualitative study were consistent with the findings of quantitative study.