The Relationship of Leadership and Student Achievement Across Societal Cultures

Abstract

School leaders are aware that their effectiveness is often defined by student performance as measured by test scores. Of particular interest in the global arena are the results of the TIMSS and PISA international assessments that rank student performance by country. While researchers and educators seek to account for the high achievement on these assessments, many turn to the characteristics and behaviors of school leaders to explain the difference in rankings. However, to view effective school leadership behaviors and characteristics from a global perspective poses some challenges, as societal culture influences the leadership process. As way to investigate leadership by societal cultures across the globe, the investigators of this study turned to The Global Leadership and Organizational Behavior Effectiveness (GLOBE) research survey, in which a research team described a large number of characteristics and behaviors, or universal leadership dimensions, to assess the different ways in which various societal clusters viewed leadership. The investigators of this study explore the relationship of global leadership using the GLOBE cultural leadership dimensions and student achievement as measured by TIMMS and PISA within cultural clusters. Findings indicated that four universal leadership dimensions, including charismatic/values based leadership, participative leadership, autonomous leadership, and self-protective leadership, were identified through ANOVA to be significant in predicting student achievement, which led the researchers to conclude that administering the GLOBE Survey to school leaders is necessary to determine the importance and value of the leadership dimensions relative to educational leaders across all cultures.