Transformational instructor-leadership and academic performance: a moderated mediation model of student engagement and structural distance

Abstract

Researchers are becoming increasingly interested in the use of transformational leadership theory in higher education teaching (often referred to as transformational instructor-leadership). Much of this body of research investigates a direct association between transformational instructor-leadership and student outcomes. In the present study, we take a step further by investigating (a) student engagement as a mechanism in the relationship between transformational instructor-leadership and students’ academic performance and (b) structural distance as a moderator of the relationship between transformational instructor-leadership and student engagement. Using a sample of 183 students across the UK, the findings supported student engagement as a full mediator, but did not support structural distance as a moderator. This study contributes to theory by (a) showing a key underlying process through which transformational instructor-leadership is related to students’ academic performance and (b) empirically examining all three dimensions of student engagement. Limitations, suggestions for future research and practical implications are discussed.

Keywords:

• Leadership
• student engagement
• academic performance
• transformational leadership
• structural distance

Notes

1. To describe a unit of teaching over an academic term, ‘module’ is used in the UK, whereas ‘course’ is used in the US. Because the present study is conducted in the UK, we use the term ‘module’ throughout the present paper.

2. We intentionally designed two separate papers prior to collecting the data. Each paper had unique research questions and separate theoretical implications that were too expansive for a single paper to address. Although there is a minor overlap between the two papers (i.e. transformational instructor-leadership was used to validate a different leadership theory in the other paper), the two papers include substantially unique variables, different results and different theoretical and practical implications.

3. For our overall sample, we did not calculate a response rate because we could not identify the number of students to whom the questionnaire was distributed. Specifically, the questionnaire was distributed to (1) a mailing list at a university, for which an exact number of members could not be provided and (2) Qualtrics, who provided only completed questionnaires to the researchers, without identifying panel size.