A Model of the Dynamics of Student Achievement

A strong culture of academic optimism is composed of three elements: collective faculty trust in students and parents, collective efficacy, and the enactment of academic emphasis. These elements identify school conditions that foster achievement.

A culture academic optimism has three important consequences for student achievement.

• First, strong collective efficacy embedded in a culture of academic optimism leads teachers and students to set and embrace specific, challenging goals that are attainable.
• Second, academic optimism and relational trust working through academic optimism foster a learning environment in which students and teachers accept responsibility for learning, are motivated to exert strong effort, persist in difficult tasks, and are resilient in the face of problems and failures.
• Third, academic optimism encourages cooperation among students, teachers, and parents in matters of student learning. Moreover, relational trust between parents and teachers enhances and supports academic optimism as well as promotes a spirit of this cooperation among students, parents, and teachers.

Challenging goals and cooperation among students, teachers, and parents lead to strong motivation that produces a high level of achievement, which in turn reinforces both relational trust and academic optimism.

These relations are pictorially depicted in the attached model showing how school properties promote student achievement.

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Hoy, W. K. (in press). School Characteristics that Make a Difference for the Achievement of all Students: A 40-year Academic Odyssey. Journal of Educational Administration.

Forsyth, P. B., Adams, C., & Hoy, W. K. (2011). Collective Trust: Why Schools Can’t Improve Without It. New York; TC Press.