The Effects of the Leadership Style on the Learning Motivation of Students in Elementary Schools

Abstract

This major objective of this study is to investigate the effect of leadership styles of science teachers on the learning motivation of elementary school students. It is generally known that students’ learning motivation could affect the learning achievement. Besides, students with strong learning motivation generally lead to better learning performance. If a teacher can break through the tradition and adopt a creative leadership style, it is possible to increase the learning motivation and result in better learning achievement. In this study, 165 primary school teachers and 2800 students were randomly selected. Leadership styles and learning motivation questionnaires were designed for research instruments. In the data analysis, descriptive statistics analysis, Pearson correlation analysis, multiple regression analysis were adopted. The results showed that: 1) Both the transformational and transactional leadership styles have been employed by elementary school teachers in this study. 2) The correlations between the above two leadership styles and the learning motivation of students are both “moderate to good relationship”. 3) The transformational and the transactional leadership styles can explain 52.60% of variance for the learning motivation of students. 4) Multiple regression analysis can be used to infer causal relationships between the leadership styles of teachers and the learning motivation of students.