Date of Award

Fall 2016

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Department

Educational Foundations & Leadership

Committee Director

Mitchell Williams

Committee Member

Chris Glass

Committee Member

Tony Perez

Abstract

The transformational teacher leadership style has been identified as having a positive impact on student motivation, academic performance, and persistence. This study served to determine if there is a relationship between perceived transformational teacher leadership and student motivation, academic performance, and STEM persistence intentions for students in transferable general education biological science courses offered at community colleges.

This quantitative research study was conducted in two phases at one campus of a large, multi-campus community college in a major urban area in a Mid-Atlantic state. In the initial phase, the researcher administered the survey to students who volunteered to participate in the study. The students who participated were enrolled in a transferable general education biological science course at the study location during the final four weeks of the semester. In the first phase, a survey containing 34 statements from the MLQ 5X-short, the MSLQ, and demographic information was administered to 178 students enrolled in transferable general education biological science courses. In the second phase, data on the student’s final numerical course grade was collected from the instructor.

A regression analysis was conducted to determine if such a relationship exists. The study did not find a statistical relationship between perceived transformational teacher leadership and academic success or intent to persist in STEM coursework. The study, however, did find a relationship between perceived transformational teacher leadership and student motivation. This study has provided additional insight as to what factors influence students in a biological community college classroom. While this study may not be generalizable to all academic subjects or student populations, it does serve to offer researchers additional knowledge in an effort to further support and retain students in higher education settings.

Rights

In Copyright. URI: http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/ This Item is protected by copyright and/or related rights. You are free to use this Item in any way that is permitted by the copyright and related rights legislation that applies to your use. For other uses you need to obtain permission from the rights-holder(s).

DOI

10.25777/1drh-9943

ISBN

9781369536942

ORCID

0000-0003-2911-9999

Download

Share

COinS