Transformational Leadership: Significance in Educational Context

This essay delves into the significance of transformational leadership within the educational context. It begins by defining transformational leadership and highlighting its importance in empowering members of the learning community for improvement. The essay then explores the conceptual framework, outlining key variables such as leadership traits and teacher outcomes. A thorough literature review supports the arguments, examining the impact of transformational leadership on teacher commitment, motivation, and school restructuring. The essay concludes by emphasizing how transformational leadership fosters autonomy and innovation, thereby promoting success in educational settings. The paper references several academic journals and research papers to support its claims, providing a comprehensive analysis of the topic.

Running head: SOIOLOGY
SOCIOLOGY
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author Note

SOCIOLOGY 1
Introduction
In the educational context, leadership can be defined as the ability of vision. It is
important for the leader for have a clear vision in the educational context with the futuristic
dimension regarding actions with the reflection of new teaching programs and strategies. The
key dimension of the leadership in the educational context. Several factors underlie the different
leadership styles towards their functioning of the educational institutions, like the democratic,
institutional, transactional, strategic and transformative context. This essay aims to argue over
the importance of transformational leadership in the educational context explaining the
significance of the leadership style, followed by conceptual framework and review of literature
of peer review journal articles and online publications.
Significance of the leadership style
Transformational leadership in the educational context is where the leaders empowers the
members of the community of learning for the improvement. The understanding of Jovanovica &
Ciricb (2016) regarding transformational leadership indicated the leadership traits of focusing
over the personal follower development, followed by the transformation of the followers to the
moral agents and leaders. The conceptualization of transformational leadership in the educational
environment can be considered as the composite structure which have significant direct as well
as indirect impact over the progress with the initiative of school restructuring as well as the
student outcomes that are teacher-perceived (Bouwmans et al., 2017).
The six dimensions of transformational leadership that has been identified are provision
of individualistic support, identification an articulation of vision, fostering the acceptance
towards the goals of groups, provision of the appropriate model, intellectual stimulation and

SOCIOLOGY 2
finally high rate of performance expectation. The transformational leadership is essential for the
educational context since it transforms the attitude, beliefs and the behaviors of the followers
towards higher realm of motivation for aiming a higher level for performance and achievement
(Liu, 2015). The success of the transformational leadership in the educational context can be
backed by the documentation of the teacher’s commitment towards motivating towards success
and positive performance. The transformational leadership positively affect over the
performance, job satisfaction and is one of the viable approach for the leaders of education for
transforming the school to a new dimension of success.
Ebrahimi et al., (2017) stated that transformational leadership in the educational context
exhibit specific behaviors within their daily interaction like inspirational motivation, idealized
influence and the intellectual stimulation. Transformation is important in the school setting since
it positively influences the ability of leadership for facilitating change in the initiative of school
restructuring and is the best suited leadership traits with the rising demands and structure of the
school and educational institution in the current century.
Conceptual Framework
The conceptual framework is the narrative for the major factors , variables and constructs as well
as their expected relations. The development of proper framework allows to delineate variables
as well as the relations within themselves that are considered to be essential and meaningful.
Therefore, a conceptual framework provides direction to consider the variables under the
transformational leadership in the educational context.

SOCIOLOGY 3
Literature Review
This section of the essay will discuss the reviews of literary resources in the context of
transformational leadership in the educational context.
Importance of leadership in education
Eliophotou-Menon & Ioannou (2016) in the research study provided an overview over the
impact of the contemporary leadership model, the transformational leadership over the teacher
connected educational outcomes. The research study presented a thorough review of
international literature regarding transformational leadership in relation to its impact over four
key outcomes, the trust within the leaders, satisfaction of the teaching job, motivation towards
learning and commitment towards the educational organization. The author of the research
Leadership Traits
Transformational behavior
Intellectual stimulation
Idealized influence Teacher Outcomes
Leadership traits
Effectiveness
Control
Antecedent Variable
Teacher experience
Teacher position
Teaching strategies
Variables of Education
Achievement Orientation
School learning environment
Centralization

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article by Bouwmans et al., (2017) referred transformational leadership as the process of
interaction among the leaders as well as the followers. The study used advanced quantitative
research like the structural equation model since these are a more reliable basis for drawing
suitable conclusion.
Transformational leadership is appropriate for educational setting
Jovanovica & Ciricb (2016) in the research article, highlighted the benefits of transformational
leadership in the context of education. The researcher argued that transformational leadership is
the most suitable for the students as well as the teachers within the condition of the school. The
three major points that has been highlighted in this research article are the ethical dimension of
the transformational leadership, moral biases and the validity of the evidences of other peer
reviewed researches, followed by evidences of the leadership practices in the educational field.
The entire study by Elrehail et al., (2018) has been done through secondary research data which
concludes the importance of transformational leadership in education. Transformational
leadership has proved to be very much useful for the educational organization.
Leadership in teaching
Transformational leadership in educational setting and school is important since the traits of
transformational leader generates effective leadership and motivation, aiming the success of the
organization. Liu (2015) in his research study examined the impact of transformational
leadership over the commitment of the teacher to change as well as the teacher and
organizational factors over the learning and teaching perception in Chinese urban school at the
secondary setting. This paper majorly uses quantitative approaches for the exploration of the
relationship among several constructs. The findings of research study by Allen, Grigsby & Peters

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(2015) related to multiple regression analysis showed that effect of the transformational school
leadership when the transformational school leadership and the commitment of teacher towards
change has been treated as singular variable. The uniqueness of the study is that the study
explores the impact of transformational school leadership over the commitment of the teacher to
change at the context of the urban upper secondary school.
Conclusion
Thus it can be concluded from the above discussion that the transformational leadership
fosters autonomy among all the individuals, thereby empowering them for problem solving as
well as innovate in the field of education. The paper argued the importance of transformational
leadership in the educational context explaining the significance of the leadership style with the
review of literary sources.

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References
Allen, N., Grigsby, B., & Peters, M. L. (2015). Does Leadership Matter? Examining the
Relationship among Transformational Leadership, School Climate, and Student
Achievement. International Journal of Educational Leadership Preparation, 10(2), 1-22.
Bouwmans, M., Runhaar, P., Wesselink, R., & Mulder, M. (2017). Fostering teachers' team
learning: An interplay between transformational leadership and participative decision-
making?. Teaching and Teacher Education, 65, 71-80.
Ebrahimi, P., Rezvani Chamanzamin, M., Roohbakhsh, N., & Shaygan, J. (2017).
Transformational and transactional leadership: Which one is more effective in the
education of employees’ creativity? Considering the moderating role of learning
orientation and leader gender. International Journal of Organizational Leadership, 6,
137-156.
Eliophotou-Menon, M., & Ioannou, A. (2016). THE LINK BETWEEN
TRANSFORMATIONAL LEADERSHIP AND TEACHERS'JOB SATISFACTION,
COMMITMENT, MOTIVATION TO LEARN, AND TRUST IN THE
LEADER. Academy of Educational Leadership Journal, 20(3), 12.
Elrehail, H., Emeagwali, O. L., Alsaad, A., & Alzghoul, A. (2018). The impact of
transformational and authentic leadership on innovation in higher education: the
contingent role of knowledge sharing. Telematics and Informatics, 35(1), 55-67.
Jovanovica, D., & Ciricb, M. (2016). Benefits of transformational leadership in the context of
education. The European Proceedings of Social & Behavioural Sciences EpSBS.

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Liu, P. (2015). Motivating teachers’ commitment to change through transformational school
leadership in Chinese urban upper secondary schools. Journal of Educational
Administration.