by

Carmen Anderson Mullins

Trevecca Nazarene University

May 2020

Major Area: Leadership and Professional Practice Number of Words: 155

The purpose of this study was to identify the effects of professional development on teachers’ self-efficacy with regard to interpersonal communication skills in order to support student achievement. Quantitative instruments provided measures throughout the research. In the first year, one set of participants completed pre- and post- surveys. Control and treatment groups were used in year two. The research period in both years was eight-weeks and included three professional developments. The first opened with pedagogy and data communication logs. A second professional development occurred midway through the eight-week period and the third included the final measure for teacher responsiveness. Descriptive statistics provided a summary of the data from the first year. In the second year, inferential statistics did not yield significance between overall self-assessment scores or the means. However, scores on the video scoring rubrics and the communication data logs identified significance. This study contributes to the pedagogy of communication within the field of education.