This major objective of this study is to investigate the effect of leadership styles of science teachers on the learning motivation of elementary school students. It is generally known that students’ learning motivation could affect the learning achievement. Besides, students with strong learning motivation generally lead to better learning performance. If a teacher can break through the tradition and adopt a creative leadership style, it is possible to increase the learning motivation and result in better learning achievement. In this study, 165 primary school teachers and 2800 students were randomly selected. Leadership styles and learning motivation questionnaires were designed for research instruments. In the data analysis, descriptive statistics analysis, Pearson correlation analysis, multiple regression analysis were adopted. The results showed that: 1) Both the transformational and transactional leadership styles have been employed by elementary school teachers in this study. 2) The correlations between the above two leadership styles and the learning motivation of students are both “moderate to good relationship”. 3) The transformational and the transactional leadership styles can explain 52.60% of variance for the learning motivation of students. 4) Multiple regression analysis can be used to infer causal relationships between the leadership styles of teachers and the learning motivation of students.
All over the world, teaching is one of the most complicated jobs nowadays. It requires broad knowledge of the subject matter, curriculum, enthusiasm, and a lot of learning, knowledge of discipline and advanced leadership styles. Many studies suggested the single most important factor determining the quality of the education a child receives is the quality of his teacher.
Leadership has always been a contentious issue among many researchers. Thousands of papers and hundreds of researches have been done on this topic [
There is an old saying “Birds of a feather flock together” which implies that birds of the same species (i.e. with similar plumage) often tend to gather to feed or migrate together. It also means that people who are similar will spend more time together because they have something in common. In other words, this also shows that people will become similar if they spend more time together. A great Chinese teacher, Confucius (551 - 479 B.C.), also said, “When I walk along with two others, they may serve me as my teachers. I will select their good qualities and follow them”. The above Confucian Analects can also be interpreted as that each member of the group will be affected by other members.
In this study, we try to investigate the effects of the leadership style on the learning motivation of students. The goals of this study were showed as follows:
1) To survey the leadership styles of science teachers and the learning motivation of students.
2) To investigate the correlation between leadership styles of teachers and the learning motivation of students.
3) To investigate the causal relationship between leadership styles of teachers and the learning motivation of students.
Leadership has always been the subject of human study. This topic has been investigated by researchers, philosophers and historians time and again [4,5]. In psychology, trait theory is an approach to the study of human personality. Trait theorists are primarily interested in the measurement of traits, which can be defined as habitual patterns of behavior, thought, and emotion [
A famous idiom “There are no poor soldiers under a good general” can be taken as a good example to illustrate a great leadership principle. Those individuals are considered to the great leaders who can change themselves according to the demand of the situations. These individuals can adopt the pattern of leadership according to the needs [
Teacher beliefs are proposed to be an indicator for certain students’ behaviors because of the mediating effects of beliefs on the ways of teaching via their impact on decision making [9,10]. For example, teachers who believed that collaborative learning could bring greater benefits than learning alone would tend to include more group work than teachers who see little or no learning value in collaboration. Furthermore, teacher beliefs are regarded as one of the most valuable constructs for teacher education [9,11]. Beliefs can guide teachers’ behavior either deliberately or spontaneously. In a deliberate way beliefs are retrieved or constructed with a lot of effort in a certain context and they are assumed to guide goal setting and behavior. In a spontaneous way beliefs are activated by routine [
Culture is a modern concept based on a term first used in classical antiquity by the Roman orator Cicero: “cultura animi” (cultivation of the soul). This non-agricultural use of the term “culture” re-appeared in modern Europe in the 17th century referring to the betterment or refinement of individuals, especially through education [
Transformational leadership enhances the motivation, morale, and performance of followers through a variety of mechanisms. These include connecting the follower’s sense of identity and self to the project and the collective identity of the organization; being a role model for followers that inspires them and makes them interested; challenging followers to take greater ownership for their work, and understanding the strengths and weaknesses of followers, so the leader can align followers with tasks that enhance their performance [
James MacGregor Burns [
Bernard M. Bass [
Within the context of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, transactional leadership works at the basic levels of need satisfaction, where transactional leaders focus on the lower levels of the hierarchy. Transactional leaders use an exchange model, with rewards being given for good performance or positive outcomes. Conversely, people with this leadership style also can punish poor achievement or negative outcomes, until the problem is corrected [
In general, transactional leadership has four dimensions: Conditional reward, management by exceptions (active), management by exceptions (passive) and laissez-faire [19,21]. Contingent reward means a process of mutual transaction where leader is trying to motivate the followers by rewards and promises [
Motivation is a psychological feature that arouses an organism to act towards a desired goal and elicits, controls, and sustains certain goal-directed behaviors. It can be considered a driving force; a psychological one that compels or reinforces an action toward a desired goal [
Generally, most students are motivated in one way or another. Some student may be keenly interested in classroom subject matter and seek out challenging course work, participate actively in class discussions, and earn high marks on assigned projects. Another student may be more concerned with the social side of school, interacting with classmates frequently, attending extracurricular activities almost every day, and perhaps running for a student government office [
However, motivation is not necessarily something that students should bring to schools; it can also arise from environmental conditions at schools. When we think about how the environment can enhance a student’s motivation to learn particular things, we are talking about situated motivation [26,27]. In the pages to come, we’ll find that as teachers, they can do so many things to motivate students to learn and behave in ways that promote their long-term success and productivity [
Typically, the school organization has a principal or headmaster as its primary leader, and a classroom organization has a teacher as its primary leader. A primary leader in classroom is someone who models, motivates, and initiates acts of leadership. In general, the leader pulls the organization to higher ground or to better achievement. It should be noted that this is different from pushing. Pushing can also motivate, but it is based on the avoidance of negative consequences.
In Taiwan, The Ministry of Education revised the Education Fundamental Act in 2005 which forbade the corporal punishment. Therefore, the traditional authoritative leadership styles must be modified to adapt to the present educational environment. Consequently, both the transformational leadership and transactional leadership styles have become the mainstream of education and hot research topics. Research results [
Up to now, related researches on this topic are still rather minor. Consequently, there is a need to conduct a research to establish if there is a relationship between teacher’s leadership styles and learning motivation of students. The results could provide a useful material for the principal, and ministry of education.
This study was designed to address the following research questions:
1) What are the leadership styles of science teachers in this study?
2) Is there a correlation between leadership styles of teachers and learning motivation of students?
3) Is there a causal relationship between leadership styles of teachers and learning motivation of students?
The study was carried out with a total of 200 teachers from 171 primary schools in Changhua Couny of Taiwan (
In this study, we have designed two questionnaires which combined the results of the literature reviews of our survey.
1) Leadership questionnaire:
A questionnaire was designed by the authors mainly based on the leadership theory proposed by Bass [
2) Learning motivation questionnaire:
Another questionnaire was designed by the authors mainly based on the “Motivated Strategies for Learning Questionnaire (MSLQ)” proposed by Wu and Cherng [
To ensure and enhance the reliability and validity of the questionnaire, Cronbach’s Alpha coefficient, corrected item-total correlation and factor analysis available in SPSS are selected in this study.
Cronbach’s Alpha determines the internal consistency or average correlation of items in a survey instrument to gauge its reliability. Nunnaly [
Factor Analysis is a technique for finding a small number of underlying dimensions from among a large number of variables. This technique was used in this study to explore the possible underlying factor structure. By performing factor analysis, the underlying factor is identified, and data reduction can be achieved. There are generally two steps in factor analysis: namely, the ex-
traction of factors and the rotation of the factors. Principal component analysis (PCA) and Varimax rotation available in SPSS was selected in this study. PCA is a widely used method for factor extraction. Factor weights are computed in order to extract the maximum possible variance, with successive factoring continuing until there is no further meaningful variance left. The factor model must then be rotated for analysis. The Cronbach’s Alpha coefficients were 0.92 and 0.95 for the first part and second part of the questionnaire, and this implies a substantial degree of reliability.
aFactor 1: individualized consideration, bFactor 2: intellectual stimulation, cFactor 3: charisma influences, dFactor 4: stimulating motivation.
aFactor 1: active management, bFactor 2: mutually beneficial award, cFactor 3: passive management.
aFactor 1: Value, bFactor 2: Expectation, cFactor 3: Emotion.
The descriptive statistics, Pearson product-moment correlation analysis and stepwise multiple regression analysis available in SPSS Statistical Package were selected in this study. The descriptive statistics is used to provide a general understanding of the collected data. Pearson product-moment correlation analysis and multiple regression analysis are adopted to investigate the correlation and causal relationship between leadership styles of teachers and learning motivation of students.
The results for the descriptive statistical analysis on the seven factors of the two leadership styles were shown in
For the transformation leadership style (see
minimum average score (M = 3.47; ranking = 4). For the transactional leadership style, the active management factor performed the maximum average score (M = 4.41; ranking = 1), while the mutually beneficial award factor exhibited the minimum average score (M = 3.18; ranking = 3).
Moreover, it can be seen that the average scores for the above two leadership style are 3.78 and 3.61 (see
The results for the descriptive statistical analysis on the three factors of the learning motivation of students were shown in
The correlation coefficients (r) between dependent varia-
ble (learning motivation of students) and independent variable (transformational leadership style) were showed in
The correlation coefficients (r) between dependent variable (learning motivation of students) and independent variable (transactional leadership style) were showed in
The results of the multiple regression analysis were shown in this section. Seven independent variables (charisma influences, stimulating motivation, intellectual stimulation, individualized consideration, mutually beneficial award, active management and passive management) have been selected into the regression equation.
Based on the aforementioned regression analysis, the following model can be postulated as a prediction tool.
Y (learning motivation) = 0.195 × X1(individualized consideration) + 0.279 × X2(passive management) +
**p < 0.01, **Correlation is significant at the 0.01 level (2-tailed).
**p < 0.01, **Correlation is significant at the 0.01 level (2-tailed).
P = 0.000, ***p < 0.001, Correlation is significant at the 0.01 level (2-tailed).
0.178 × X3(charisma influences) + 0.119 × X4(intellectual stimulation) + 0.096 × X5(active management) + 0.049 × X6(stimulating motivation) + 0.042 × X7(award mutually beneficially)
According to the above-mentioned analysis results, the following conclusions were drawn:
1) From the above study results, it can be found that both the transformational and transactional leadership styles have been employed by elementary school teachers in Changhua County of Taiwan.
2) The correlations between the above two leadership styles and the learning motivation of students are both “moderate to good relationship”.
3) The transformational and the transactional leadership styles can explain 52.60% of variance for the learning motivation of students 4) Multiple regression analysis can be used to infer causal relationships between the leadership styles of teachers and the learning motivation of students.
The author proposes the following recommendations for schools and teachers who would like to engage in instructional innovation.
1) According to the study results, the coefficient of determination (R2) for the individual consideration factor of the transformational leadership style is 0.37, which implies that the individual consideration factor can explain 36.80% of the learning motivation of students. Therefore, it is suggested that teachers can employ the individual consideration in the leadership style to support various individual consideration according to different student types.
2) According to the study results, the sum of the coefficient of determination (R2) for the seven factors of the transformational leadership and transactional leadership styles is 0.526. This implies that the above two leadership styles can explain 52.6% of the learning motivation of students. Therefore, if a teacher can employ both the above leadership styles, the learning motivation of students can be well stimulated.
3) Students’ learning motivation could be affected by several factors, for example: social factor, family factor, school environmental factor, teacher’s factor, student’s personal factor, etc. This study focused on the relationship between teachers’ leadership styles and students’ learning motivation. Other factors could be further investigated in future work.
4) Only quantitative analysis has been adopted in this study. It is suggested that qualitative research method could be employed in future work to provide more useful information for students’ learning motivation.