Teacher Leadership Styles and Student Psychological Characteristics Affecting The Study Methods of Foundation English Courses in Higher Education: A Case Study of Education and Humanity/Liberal Arts Students in Thailand

Abstract

The objectives of the study were to study teacher leadership styles, self-efficacy future-oriented & self-control and achievement motivation affecting students’ study methods among groups of higher education students majoring Humanities/Liberal Arts and Educational Science in the Bangkok metropolitan area. The verification of invariance of structural model and measurement model among groups of students with different sex, year of study and type of institutions was included. The research sample were 480 students of both public and private universities in Bangkok selected by multistage random sampling from 4 public and 4 private universities. Data collection was performed using questionnaire and was analyzed using path analysis. It was clear that the developed model was fit to the empirical data with all goodness of fit indices satisfying the required criteria: X 2 = 34.28, df = 35, p = .503, GFI = .990, AGFI = .970, RMR = .006, SRMR = .014, and RMSEA = .000. The findings revealed that 1) Teacher leadership styles had significantly lower-positive direct effect on Foundation English course study methods; 2) Self-efficacy had significant moderate positive direct effect on Foundation English study methods; 3) Future-oriented and self-control affected both lower direct and indirect effect on Foundation English course study methods via achievement motivation in studying English. In addition, future-oriented and self-control gained the highest direct effect on achievement motivation; 4) Teacher leadership styles and student psychological characteristics mutually predicted students’ study methods of Foundation English at 72%; and 5) The developed research model was invariant across groups of students with different sex, year of study and types of higher education institutions. The author concluded that student’s psychological characteristics affected significantly the study methods of Foundation English courses.