Educational leadership and its development: Perceptions of academic members in Chinese higher education

The change and competition in higher education have challenged the educational leaders to develop new
competencies, knowledge and skills in addition to their traditional expertise. Educational leaders in this
context have been expected to broaden their leadership knowledge, enhance their leadership skills and
competencies, and improve their leadership styles in this dissertation.
The main aim of the current dissertation is to conceptualise educational leadership in Chinese higher
education, investigate the factors contributing to leadership styles, examine academics’ needs in leadership
trainings, academics’ motivation for joining a leadership training and its effectiveness.
The first chapter presents the critical importance of educational leadership in higher education and the
research problems situated in the context of higher education with regard to the needs of enhancing
educational leadership and the needs for educational leadership trainings and development. The theoretical
framework based on SDT (Ryan & Deci, 2017) and training evaluation model (Kirkpatrick & Kirkpatrick,
2006) guiding the research questions, design, and instrumentation as well as data analysis methods are
introduced. On this basis, the educational leadership in HE is conceptualised and educational leaders’
leadership styles and training needs are identified, which subsequently paved the way for the following
addressed studies and provides insights into the leadership training design.
Chapter 2 investigates academics’ perception on educational leadership that includes the conceptualization
of educational leadership in HE, their perceived effective educational leadership and needs for capacity
building. The findings offer a well-rounded conceptualization of educational leadership and offers insights
that can be helpful for leadership training and development. Additionally, they offer guidance to universities
administrators and policymakers on creating conducive environments and policies to support the successful
implementation of educational leadership experiences.
Chapter 3 identifies academic members’ personal educational leadership styles, leadership practices and the
influence of organizational structure features on it, and the effect of educational leadership practice on
teaching and learning of selected Chinese universities. These results provide a comprehensive picture of
educational leadership styles, practices, and the perceived effects of educational leadership practices on
teaching and learning, which can be helpful for educational leaders in optimizing educational leadership
practices to improve teaching and learning in higher education.
Chapter 4 identifies the leadership styles of mid-level educational leaders and perceived contextual factors
related to their leadership styles. The findings show authoritarian leadership style, experienced by young
academic members, reported as a key leadership style of the mid-level educational leaders. Followed by
transformational and transactional leadership styles. The findings suggest encouraging the adoption of
transformational leadership style. The results can be conducive to future leadership development and to the
mid-level educational leaders to create environments that facilitate the application of educational leadership
practices.
Chapter 5 outlines academics’ perceived needs and challenges in leadership trainings. The findings show the
needs in leadership training in terms of training methods, training contents and training formats, and
challenges in the pre-training organization, training design and content, post-training application and in the
institutional administration systems. These findings provide suggestions and new insights into the demands
for educational leadership training, which can improve and support the sustainable educational leadership
training.
Chapter 6 investigates the motivation and training results of European and Chinese academic members who
attended a leadership training programme. The findings reveal Chinese and European participants’ motivation
for joining the leadership training programme and their perception of the effectiveness of the training
programme, which provides insights into a culturally appropriate methodology for a cross-cultural leadership
training programme and highlights the interplay of factors that impact the perceived effectiveness.
Chapter 7 investigates the relationship among motivation for joining a leadership training programme (MOT),
perceived skills (PS), and perceived changes in transformational leadership (PCTFL) after the leadership
training programme. The findings show motivation positively influences perceived changes in
transformational leadership, and this relationship is positively mediated by perceived skills. This provides
novel empirical evidence on motivation that leads to transformational leadership improvement in leadership
training programmes and offers empirical evidence on leadership training programmes that can be perceived
as effective from the perceived changes in transformational leadership, as they continue to benefit from
perceived skills and participants’ motivation.
In the end, Chapter 8 summarizes the most significant findings drawn from the six sub-studies and discusses
the educational and research implications in the domain of educational leadership, leadership styles, capacity
building and leadership training and development with insights for future research and practice.