In recent years, school leaders in Austria - similar to international trends - have consistently been given more responsibility (e.g. OECD, 2016). They are expected to manage administrative tasks while also engage in systematic teaching, personnel, and organizational development, thereby creating a sucessful school. In line with this, analytic modelst o describe the impact of school leadership unanimously assume indirect effects on academic performance, school engagement and student participation (e.g. Gumus et al., 2018; Leithwood et al., 2020). There is also a consensus that such effects can unfold in different ways, whereby the process qualities of educational work are considered indispensable. In the framework model by Hallinger (2011), the beliefs and values represent a significant factor of leadership activities. Studies also suggest that individual beliefs of school leaders about what makes a good school and about what good teaching looks like can influence the structures and processes of collaboration and even teaching within the school (Tickle et al., 2005; Gu et al., 2008).

In German-speaking research, the basic model of teaching quality has been established since the 2010s, including the dimensions of cognitive activation, constructive support (i.e. supportive teaching climate) and classroom management. These dimensions contribute to student achievement of learning objectives and thus to ‘effective’ teaching (e.g. Praetorius et al., 2018). Successful instruction is to a great extent a product of the professional competence of teachers including job-related knowledge, motivational characteristics, but also beliefs. Following Pajares (1992, p. 316) beliefs are „an individual’s judgement of truth or falsity of a proposition.“ Teachers have beliefs about many different things (e.g. knowledge, students and teaching). In the area of teaching-related beliefs, the relevant literature makes a fundamental distinction between a traditional/transmissive and a constructivist understanding of how children and young people learn and which didactic formats optimally support them in this process (Fives et al., 2015). Although subjective beliefs are generally resistant to change, they can be revised under certain conditions. A relevant factor in this context are beliefs that arise within an organisation through joint activities and shared experiences (Pajares, 1992). Beliefs and shared beliefs arise and change in dialogue with others. As these activities are often initiated, coordinated and moderated by the school leader, they have the potential to influence the beliefs of teachers (Tschannen-Moran et al. 2015).

The following questions arise from the previous explanations:

(1) Is there a correlation between (maths) teachers' beliefs about teaching and learning and the way they organize their lessons at classroom and school level?

(2) Is there a statistical effect at the school level of principles‘ beliefs about teaching and learning on teachers’ beliefs in this regard?

(3) Are indirect effects at school level of principles‘ beliefs about teaching and learning (via teachers’ beliefs) on the quality of instruction? 

The data for this study originate from the national, standardized Austrian student assessment in mathematics in 2019. All schools at primary level with students in grade 4 participated in the compulsory tests. In total, data are available for 3.785 teachers and 73.780 students from 2.961 schools. The questionnaires for teachers and leaders contained 2 scales with 4 items each on personal beliefs about teaching and learning. Both scales are based on the items of the Teaching and Learning international Study (TALIS) 2008. Constructivist beliefs are measured with 4 items (e.g., “Students learn best by finding solutions to problems on their own.”), transmissive beliefs are measured with 4 items (e.g., “It is better when the teacher – not the student – decides what activities are to be done.”). A four-point scale ranging from strongly disagree (= 1) to strongly agree (= 4) was available as response options. As transmissive and constructivist beliefs are empirically not clearly separable, responses were converted into ipsative values (Blömeke, 2011). Items to measure the instructional quality were used in both the student and the teacher questionnaire (BIFIE, 2019). For this reason, both perspectives can be used to analyse the research questions. From students' perspective, cognitive activation was measured with 4 items (e.g., “The exercises are just right for me, not too easy and not too difficult.”), classroom management with 3 items (e.g., “In class, all students follow the rules.”), and social learning climate with 3 items (e.g., “We have great trust in our teacher.”). Teachers rated cognitive activation with 4 items (e.g., “I give students different tasks depending on their ability.”), classroom management with 3 items (e.g., “My students follow the rules in class.”) and social learning climate with 3 items (e.g., “My students have great trust in me as a teacher.”). All items were rated on a four-point Likert scale with the options every lesson (= 1), most lessons (= 2), some lessons (= 3) and never or almost never (= 4). Three-level structural equation models were estimated to analyse the relationships between school leaders‘ and teachers’ beliefs and instructional quality. Due to the complexity of the model, the three aspects of instructional quality were not estimated simultaneously in one model. Rather, two separate models were calculated for each dimension; one with student and one with teacher ratings.

Based on the teacher data, both cognitive activation and the social learning climate are predicted by the teachers’ constructivist beliefs. If, on the other hand, the quality of teaching is estimated by students, no correlations can be found between teachers' beliefs and instructional quality at the teacher level. At school level, and thus in a comparison of schools with one another, teachers' constructivist beliefs are positively associated with cognitive activation and social learning climate when assessed from teacher perspective. From student perspective, there is a significant correlation between social learning climate and constructivist beliefs. The hypothesis that school leaders' beliefs about teaching and learning are systematically related to those of teachers is supported by the data. At schools where the school leader is more in favour of constructivist (or transmissive) beliefs the teachers are also more in favour of constructivist (or transmissive) beliefs. Statistically significant indirect effects of school leaders‘ beliefs via teachers’ beliefs on instructional quality can be observed for cognitive activation and social learning climate, but only if assessed by teachers. Looking at the theoretical foundations, these findings emphasise the importance of shared beliefs and thus the coherence of teaching-related views among teachers in terms of instructional design. In addition, school leaders seem in a position to influence this coherence of teaching-related views to a certain extent.

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