Teacher leadership and students’ psychological needs: A multilevel approach

Abstract

This study aimed to determine the association between students' perception of teacher leadership (i.e., transformational, transactional, and passive) and students' psychological needs (i.e., need satisfaction and need frustration) in Mathematics, English as a foreign language, Spanish Language and Literature, and Physical Education. Participants were 858 students (346 boys and 512 girls), who completed questionnaire measures at three temporal points over an academic course. They were aged between 13 and 17 years (M = 14.83, SD = 0.74) from 118 different classes and 32 secondary schools of southwestern Spain. We conducted multilevel modeling analysis (MLM), using the linear mixed modeling procedure for each dependent variable (i.e., need satisfaction and need frustration), including the different subjects, the three measurements over the academic course (i.e., Time 1, Time 2, and Time 3), and the leadership styles (i.e., transformational, transactional, and passive leadership) as independent variables. The results showed that transformational leadership was positively related to students' need satisfaction and negatively to their need frustration. Transactional leadership was positively associated with students' need frustration, and passive leadership negatively predicted students' need satisfaction and positively predicted need frustration. Differences were found as a function of the time and the subject in the associations between variables. These findings suggest that teachers should adopt transformational behaviors to satisfy the students’ psychological needs.