The Relationship Between Teacher Transformational Leadership and Students’ Motivation to Learn in Higher Education

Jingkun ZHAO, Haiming HOU, Jianjun YIN

Abstract


This quantitative study sought to examine whether there existed relationships between teacher transformational leadership and students’ motivation to learn. In aggregate, 171 undergraduates recruited from a public Chinese university participated in the study through a random sampling. The participants were administered two instruments: the Multi-factor Leadership Questionnaire (MLQ) 5X-short to measure students’ perceptions of the teacher transformational leadership in the educational context and the Motivated Strategies for Learning Questionnaires (MSLQ) to measure students’ motivation to learn. The data collected were analyzed by Pearson’s correlation and multiple regressions using the Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS). The results from the multiple regression analyses further verified the findings in the previous literature that teacher transformational leadership could contribute to the students’ increased motivation to learn. It is recommended in the study that professional development be the best practice to facilitate the problems and all the college teachers should attend the professional development about transformational leadership behaviors, and implement the newly-acquired knowledge and skills to elevate students’ motivation to learn.


Keywords


Transformational leadership; Higher education; Students’ motivation to learn

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References


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DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.3968/12126

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