Leadership styles and strategies have been a subject of debate since ancient Greek philosophical writings, Machiavelli, Milton and many other scholars. Twentieth century marks the bloom of studies, research and theories in educational leadership. An article by Smith, Minor, Brashen, and Remaly (2017) “Successful Instructional Leadership Styles In Education” will be further evaluated. This research explored four leadership styles via teachers’ surveys that “indicated that the transformational leadership style was the most common style used by the online instructors” (Smith, et al., 2017). Although the article gathered data from 22 active educators, among which the majority have reported use of the transformational style during online instruction, the study did not provide enough data to link its findings to the claimed prospect of further instructional improvement, teachers’ support and students’ satisfaction.
Smith., et. al. (2017) starts with an introduction that is broad, yet limited as it does not offer definitions and key components of each leadership style. The purpose of the research study claims to find if there is a “dominant leadership style online instructors tend to develop in order to be effective, or if there are various leadership styles that promote effective instruction” (Smith et.al., 2017). If this sentence is to be taken as a thesis, it lacks a specific claim that can be useful for teachers’, students’ and leaders’ needs. At this research level, it is mere data gathering that is not yet linked to the promotion of effective instruction in a specific proven way. The study does indeed find that over 70% of the surveyed instructors tend to use transformational instructional style, yet leads to the question - what is next?
The researchers further write, “The data collected from this research study will contribute to better leadership training of instructors at the bachelor, graduate, and doctorate levels” (Smith et.al., 2017). The purpose to identify the main leadership style preferred and developed by online instructors is claimed to improve leadership on various higher-education levels; however, it leaves unclear how in particular the research may be used for improvement.
Methodology and Participation sections indicated a 22% participation rate which points at low incentivisation among respondents that might have affected accuracy of the responses. The Literature Review focuses on the history of online learning as well as synchronous and asynchronous modes of instructional delivery that do not directly relate or contribute to the study focus. The authors work with the scope of four leadership styles in education: transformational, situational, democratic, and authoritarian, yet omit such leadership styles as constructivist, strategic, instructional, normative, coaching, servant, etc. A restricted focus creates further limitations in accuracy of data collection.
In the Discussion section, the authors do recognize limitations in the group size and questionable understanding of the survey terms, yet do not recognise lack of connection between the research focus and its claimed impact. The conclusion of the study is that professional development in transformational leadership is necessary to improve teachers’ and students’ satisfaction and instructional outcomes. However, it is not proven that they would. Missing data might have been obtained through further studies of baseline outcomes and students’ feedback as well as post-professional development, implementation, monitoring and evaluation of instructional outcomes after the application of teachers’ training in transformational leadership.
References
Smith, G., Minor, M., Brashen, H., & Remaly, K. (2017). Successful instructional
leadership styles in education. Journal of Instructional Research, 6 (1), 46–52. https://doi.org/10.9743/jir.2017.8
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