Description

Academic achievement is an important outcome for undergraduate students. A key component of academic achievement, and predictor of student success, is student engagement. College professors are influential to the levels of student engagement observed in the classroom. The current study adopts the view of professors as leaders in the classroom and recognizes how leadership styles affect follower behavior. Previous literature has identified the transformational leadership style as the most effective for professors to use in the classroom. Prior research, however, has not compared the effectiveness of the transformational leadership style with other leadership styles. The current study fills this gap in the literature by directly comparing how transformational, servant, and authentic leadership styles influence student engagement. A sample of 251 participants were surveyed. The survey asked participants to answer questions about the last professor they had class with to ensure a variety of classes. The survey data was analyzed using a stepwise regression to yield a model that would help identify the most influential predictors of student engagement. The stepwise regression revealed that the transformational leadership style affected student engagement the most, followed by the openness personality trait, the conscientiousness personality trait, and the servant leadership style. These findings align with those found in previous literature and affirm that the transformational leadership style is the most effective in the classroom. Future research can direct focus to the transformational leadership model and identify which aspects of it are most engaging to students, as well as the professor behaviors that communicate the transformational leadership style.