Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2014, EDU Policy and Leadership

This study first develops the conceptual and theoretical justifications for investigating whether professional learning community (PLC) may serve as an organizational and cultural mechanism for explaining academic optimism (AO). Using school as the unit of study, this study explores extant data from 105 “high-need” elementary, middle, and high schools (and 2,020 teachers) who used Title 1 School Improvement funds to participate in Ohio's now-defunct literacy project across the 2007-08 and 2008-09 school years. Principal Axis Factoring, Pearson Product Correlation, and Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA) were used to explore associations between PLC, AO, and their respective sub-scales. Hierarchical Multiple Regression was used to explore relationships with school-level student achievement and other school-level demographics. Analysis identified many medium to strong positive correlations with subscales among themselves and across constructs. Confirmatory factor analysis models suggested a mixed result for the two latent constructs of PLC and AO. The combined effect of all five PLC sub-scales explained a moderate amount of variance in school-level AO. There was no statistically significant effect for either PLC, its subscales, or AO on school-level academic achievement; only prior achievement had such an effect.

Committee: Ann Allen Ph.D. (Advisor); Ann O'Connell Ed.D. (Committee Member); Scott Sweetland Ph.D. (Committee Member) Subjects: Education; Education Policy; Educational Leadership