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A recent meta-meta-analysis looks at the relationship between principal leadership and student achievement
The importance of leadership
By Justin Hill, Johns Hopkins University
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A recent meta-meta-analysis by Huang Wu and Jianping Shen seeks to analyze the relationship between principal leadership and student achievement. The authors used 12 meta-analyses conducted from 2000 to 2020 to conduct this analysis, with an interest on the effect size of the relationship between principal leadership and student achievement, the specific elements of principal leadership associated with student achievement, and other variables that may moderate the relationship between principal leadership and student achievement.
The primary finding of the analysis was that principal leadership is significantly associated with student achievement (d = 0.34, p = .003), which the authors term a “moderate effect”. The findings for specific principal leadership approaches associated with student achievement were not as clear. Of the 5 meta-analyses that investigated this relationship, 2 identified instructional leadership as most associated with improved student outcomes, 1 identified distributed leadership, 1 identified transformational leadership, and 1 identified other leadership styles. Thus, the authors concluded that no specific leadership style is consistently most associated with improved student outcomes. The authors also reported that 4 out of 5 meta-analyses that examined educational context as a moderating variable in the relationship between principal leadership and student outcomes found significant effects. This educational context may refer to cultural backgrounds, policy initiatives, school location, and student body composition, among other items. Given the variety of definitions used in examining educational context, the authors were unable to establish consistent effects and instead simply indicated that educational context appears to have a moderating effect on this relationship. The authors concluded the article by noting both the evidence of a significant association between principal leadership and student achievement as well as the need for further research on principal leadership styles and the moderating role of different educational contexts.
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