If you would like to write for this, or any other Emerald publication, then please use our Emerald for Authors service information about how to choose which publication to write for and submission guidelines are available for all. Please visit www.emeraldinsight.com/authors for more information. About Emerald www.emeraldinsight.comEmerald is a global publisher linking research and practice to the benefit of society. The company manages a portfolio of more than 290 journals and over 2,350 books and book series volumes, as well as providing an extensive range of online products and additional customer resources and services.Emerald is both COUNTER 4 and TRANSFER compliant. The organization is a partner of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) and also works with Portico and the LOCKSS initiative for digital archive preservation. AbstractPurpose -The purpose of this paper is to explore the relationships among faculty trust in the principal, principal leadership behaviors, school climate, and student achievement. Design/methodology/approach -Data from 64 elementary, middle, and high schools in two school districts formed the basis of the study (n ¼ 3,215 teachers), allowing for correlational and regression analyses of the variables. Findings -The authors found that faculty trust in the principal was related to perceptions of both collegial and instructional leadership, as well as to factors of school climate such as teacher professionalism, academic press, and community engagement. Student achievement was also correlated with trust, principal leadership behaviors, and school climate. The authors found that both of the composite variables, principal behaviors and school climate, made significant independent contributions to explaining variance in student achievement and that together they explained 75 percent of the variance in achievement.Research limitations/implications -Limitations of the study include the use of a single form to collect participants' responses that may have elevated the degree of correlations, as well as the exclusion of rural schools from the sample. Practical implications -The findings of this study suggest that principals must foster and maintain trust in order to lead schools effectively. Importantly, trust has both interpersonal and task-oriented dimensions. Thus, principals must be prepared to engage collegially with teachers in ways that are consistently honest, open, and benevolent, while also dependably demonstrating sound knowledge and competent decision making associated with administering academic programs. Originality/value -Situated in a conceptual framework of systems theory, this study explored the interplay of faculty trust in the principal, principal behavior, school climate, and student achievement. The findings suggest that it is necessary for principals to evidence both interpersonal and task-oriented behaviors in order to be trusted by teachers. Furthermore, the strength of the relationships suggests that schools will not be successful in fostering student learning with...

In this era of accountability and significant school reform, efforts to improve schools increasingly look to the principal to spearhead change efforts at the school level. Good principals are the cornerstones of good schools. Without a principal's leadership efforts to raise student achievement, a school cannot achieve its fundamental academic mission. The principal is seen as a key agent at the school level, initiating change by raising the level of expectations for both teachers and students. One promising, but largely unexplored avenue to understanding principal motivation and behavior is principals' sense of efficacy. Self-efficacy is a perceived judgment of one's ability to effect change, which may be viewed as a foundational characteristic of an effective school leader. This paper reports on three studies that were conducted in the search for a reasonably valid and reliable measure to capture principals' sense of efficacy.