Transformational Instructor‐Leadership in Higher Education Teaching: A Meta‐Analytic Review and Research Agenda

Abstract

Researchers have shown that transformational leadership is applicable to higher education teaching, that is, transformational instructor-leadership. However, such research is fractionated across diverse fi elds. To address the fractionated literature, the purpose of the current study was to conduct a meta-analytic review of transformational instructor-leadership and to analyze research in which such leadership has been empirically associated with student outcomes. For the meta-analysis, the Hunter-Schmidt approach was adopted, and thus, correlations were corrected for attenuation due to measurement error. The fi ndings indicated that transformational instructor-leadership was positively associated with students' motivation, satisfaction, perceptions of instructor credibility, academic performance, affective learning, and cognitive learning. Moderator analyses revealed that culture, course delivery, instrument, and gender were all signifi cant moderators of the relationship between transformational instructor-leadership and specifi c student outcomes. The fi ndings also showed that there were signifi cant differences between the transformational leadership dimensions, thus supporting the notion that each dimension is conceptually distinct. The present meta-analysis drew from varied disciplines in contributing the fi rst integrative review on transformational instructorleadership. Future research needs to extend the literature with regard to context sensitivity, common method variance, causal conclusions, mechanisms, outcome measures, and control variables. Practically, higher education institutions should consider training transformational instructor-leaders.

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