Teacher Self-Regulatory Climate: Conceptualizing an Indicator of Leader Support for Teacher Learning and Development

ABSTRACT

Few studies that examine organizational conditions conducive to teacher learning utilize social-psychological theory to explain how leader actions specifically support teachers’ psychological needs as learners. We apply self-determination theory to the conceptualization of a new construct, Teacher Self-Regulatory Climate (TSRC), defined as a set of school-wide organizational and normative conditions capable of addressing teachers’ psychological needs for learning and development. In this article, we assess the validity and reliability of TSRC through confirmatory factor analysis in a large urban school district with over 2,000 teachers. Our findings support its concurrent validity with respect to transformational leadership and collective teacher efficacy.