Globally, student achievement has been a topic of debate in legislation, education discourses, and society at large. Particularly, this has led to questions on whether transformational leadership often leads to positive achievement among students and particularly if school leaders often lead to substantial growth in student achievement. The Literature Review of Transformational School Leadership investigated the link between transformational leadership and student achievement.
Particularly, the consequence of instructional leadership and transformational student leadership on the achievement of students was compared through non-impact studies. A study by Shatzer et al. (2014) established that instructional leadership provided much more explanation of the discrepancy in students’ achievement than was the case with transformational leadership (Li & Karanxha, 2022). Dutta and Sahney’s (2016), in their study, agreed with Shatzer et al. (2014) (Li & Karanxha, 2022).
They indicated that compared with transformational student leadership, which facilitates change and develops a supportive school culture, instructional leadership offers practices that are more certain to concentrate on change in the core curriculum that is easy for principals to understand and use (Li & Karanxha, 2022). The implication is that transformational leadership theory may be required to adapt to the practical demand that school leaders have for greater efficacy in its application.
On the other hand, Day et al.’s (2016) mixed-method study established that achievement of success does not have any sole leadership formula (Li & Karanxha, 2022). Scholars Makgato and Mudzanani’s (2019) qualitative study recommended the combination of instructional, democratic and transformational leadership to improve teachers’ job satisfaction and learning performance among learners. Thus, scholars are encouraging an amalgamation of different leadership styles with transformational leadership.
A majority of studies established that transformational leadership has a substantial positive consequence on the accomplishment of students. Some, such as the ones mentioned above, tended to encourage combining transformational leadership with other leadership forms. Thus, transformational leadership is always emerging as a key component. It can be concluded that transformational leadership and student achievement are linked. Good transformational leadership leads to greater achievements and vice versa is also true.
Reference
Li, Y., & Karanxha, Z. (2022). Literature review of transformational school leadership: models and effects on student achievement (2006–2019). SAGE. Web.