Transformational Leadership in Schools in Asian-Pacific C ountries: A n Integrative Review
Keywords:
Transformational leadership, School leadership, Asia & the Pacific, Literature reviewAbstract
In K-12 education contexts around the world, increased regulation and quality assurance measures have made school leadership more transactional and compliance-oriented. Research shows that an alternative approach to school leadership, transformational leadership (TL),has positive outcomes in overall school climate, teacher satisfaction and student outcomes. However, the majority of research on TL in schools has been done on western populations, specifically the United States and United Kingdom. Little is known about the literature on this phenomenon for populations in countries in Asia and the Pacific. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to present the state of the scholarly literature on TL in schools in Asia and the Pacific using integrative literature review methodology, which conducts a systematic and comprehensive collection of available sources. The five stages of data collection included planning, article identification, screening, analysis and reporting. After the review of 45 peer-reviewed journal articles from 16 countries/ territories in Asia and the Pacific, findings show that there are many contexts in which TL leads to positive outcomes in schools in terms of climate and even modest but largely indirect contributions to student performance. Empirical and non-empirical methods were found to study TL in these contexts with most studies using quantitative methods (N = 32) and relying on a form of the Multi-Factor Leadership Questionnaire (N = 13). Implications related to facilitating the use of TL practices, role-modelling TL in higher education when preparing school leaders and training and development programs geared towards developing TL are discussed.
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